A genre-bending noir, and perhaps the squiddiest novel ever written, False Bodies creates a horror/thriller blend of the renowned Newfoundland culture seen in shows like Come From Away with the heart-pounding tension and creeping fear of Alien.

False Bodies follows monster hunter Eddie “The Yeti” Gesner to Newfoundland, to investigate a mass death on an offshore oil rig—which some say is the work of a kraken. A mysterious incident in Eddie’s life has made him obsessed with chasing unfathomable things, but when an antique diary plunges him into a watery world of squid cults, tentacled beasts and corporate greed, Eddie finds even his own fractured reality pushed to the brink, as he’s forced to confront an undersea power beyond human imagining.

J.R. McConvey’s debut short story collection, Different Beasts, won the 2020 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for speculative fiction. His stories have been shortlisted for the Journey Prize and the Bristol Short Story Prize, and published widely in magazines and anthologies, including Joyland, The New Quarterly, Taddle Creek and Weird Horror. He splits his time between Toronto, where he lives with his family, and a different dimension, in which he is an eldritch, giant cephalopod, hovering in the cosmos. Find him online @jrmcconvey & jrmcconvey.com.

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