The Sunken, the Adored: A Novel by Donyae Coles (Paperback) (PREORDER)

Fiction - Horror - Monsters & Creatures - Historical - Thrillers - Supernatural - African American & Black

RELEASE DATE: 8/25/2026 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

A chilling Lovecraftian horror story from the author of Midnight Rooms, in which a recently freed slave from America making a new life for herself in 1700 Venice finds the mysterious plague that killed her former master may have followed her to Italy . . . and now stalks the canals.

Venice, Italy, 1700. The only survivor on a ship, Mercy disembarks in Italy, carrying two precious possessions: the first-ever camera that makes daguerreotype plates and a letter regarding an appointment meant for the dead slave holder.

The letter takes her to Umberto, an Anatomist. In his basement workspace, she learns he hired the man who formally owned her to capture images of dissected corpses. But that man is dead. With no other recourse for her or Umberto, Mercy assumes the position. In return for the sample plate she took, Umberto takes her to the home of the Contessa, a British woman who married into her title. Charmed by Marcy, she invites the young woman to stay for the season to take pictures.

Formally enslaved, Marcy finds this new life of freedom heady, as she takes on the mantle of a photographer and guest in a decadent house of pleasure under the hospitality of an aristocrat. Under the Contessa’s roof, she meets a diverse cast of friendly and strange individuals with whom she forms new bonds and friendships.

But all is not well in her new life. Something dark and hungry stalks the canals that snake through the city, biting at her heels. The same death that rode the waves with her now surrounds her in this strange place. What is this malevolence that haunts her? As she tries to understand this macabre force, she must grapple with a greater fear: that the horror that endangers her friends is herself.

The Sunken, The Adored is dark, eerie, and wholly original—at once unsettling and irresistibly addictive.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Donyae Coles is a speculative fiction author who absolutely believes in ghosts. She is the author of the novel Midnight Rooms, and her short stories have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, and other media. She has also published in anthologies such as All These Sunken Souls. She lives in the Twin Cities with her children and cats.

Coles has proven she is no one-hit wonder with her wholly original, impossible-to-pigeonhole second novel. - Library Journal

THE SUNKEN, THE ADORED captivates from the first page, when the formerly enslaved Mercy disembarks from a ship in 18^th century Venice and takes up her former master's equipment and profession in the modern art of daguerreotyping. Mesmerized by her few-found freedom and struggling to free herself from the trauma of her past, Mercy throws herself into all the hedonistic pleasures Venice has to offer...but something dangerous stalks the canals, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Did it follow Mercy across the sea on the ship that brought her to Italy? Or is the danger coming from Mercy herself? Donyae Coles layers her tale brilliantly in prose at once lush, atmospheric, and mesmerically unsettling. - Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network

The Sunken, The Adored is a sumptuous, watery historical terror, presenting its horrors draped in luxurious excess while asking how long we can drown the bestial hungers within ourselves, knowing they are never truly gone. - Eden Royce, author of the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Hollow Tongue

In The Sunken, The Adored, Donyae Coles writes beautifully of abominable things. This novel transports you through time, submerges you in sorrow, and floods you with fear. - Johnny Compton, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Spite House and Dead First

Dark, intoxicating, disturbing: The Sunken, the Adored is a rare jewel of a book that will hook its many tentacles into your heart and brain and make its home there. Coles is an author to watch; I cannot wait to see what other beautiful and unsettling things she will dream up next. - Johanna Van Veen, author of My Darling Dreadful Thing

A glorious cathedral of incense and viscera. No one knows how to haunt, horrify, and romance a reader like Coles. This book wrapped me into its feverish arms and whispered endless nightmares. I loved every minute of it. - Kristy Park Kulski, Bram Stoker nominated author and editor of Silk & Sinew

Utterly and darkly seductive. Coles paints for us a fever-dream of Venice, layered with decadence and madness and insatiable hungers. - Sunyi Dean, Author of The Book Eaters

Bram Stoker Award-nominee Coles' evocative and atmospheric follow-up to Midnight Rooms is an inventive blend of gothic fiction and cosmic horror, offering twists and turns aplenty as Mercy tries to evade the menacing entity that haunts her. - Booklist