“LaRocca holds readers rapt, engrossing them in a tale of layered depravities, confident they will be unable to look away. This is an exemplary middle book of a trilogy, a strong stand-alone story that plants the seed for the finale to come, and a tale that honors the history of the gothic but gives it new life by injecting it with the alluring catharsis of transgressive horror. For fans of Shirley Jackson, Clive Barker, and Poppy Z. Brite.”
Booklist, Starred Review
“An absolute must-read miasma of immorality.”
Cinema Chords
“Poetic and vile in equal measure”
FanFiAddict
“Eric LaRocca returns to Burnt Sparrow much like a vulture circles carrion, ready to peck the bones clean. The second installment in his curdled New England trilogy is an abominable blend of perverted Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury at his most wretched, creating an utter miasma of immorality. There isn’t a shadow within mankind’s darkest nature that LaRocca will not drag into the autumnal light, illuminating what’s monstrous in us all.”
Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Devil Inside
“Unapologetically horrific, We Turn Gruesome at Night pulls readers deeper into the dark and disturbed town of Burnt Sparrow. This novel dares to show us how deeply wrong a place can be, and how it can transform the human beings trapped there into something monstrous. Deviant, unflinching and beautifully poetic, the Burnt Sparrow Trilogy is proving to be LaRocca’s masterwork.”
Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People and Stay Buried
“We Turn Gruesome at Night opens with a disturbing confessional letter in which things are said that shouldn’t be. In fact, the whole book feels that way—it’s a long, beautiful invitation to spend time with twisted sights, tortured bodies, and blackened souls. Eric is one of our absolute best.”
Richard Kadrey, New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim series
“With We Turn Gruesome at Night, Eric LaRocca returns to the New Hampshire town of Burnt Sparrow a decade after the carnage that occurred in his 2025 novel, We Are Always Tender with Our Dead. Here, LaRocca takes the traditional material of the New England gothic–winter isolation, confinement in an old house, secret confessions, forbidden desire, blood-drenched transgression, even rats in the walls–and uses it to tell the story of a man and a woman gradually constructing their own, living damnation. LaRocca’s writing continues to surprise and delight as he takes the Burnt Sparrow trilogy in new, unexpected directions.”
John Langan, author of Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions
“LaRocca somehow makes gruesome body horror feel purposeful rather than gratuitous, while giving us deeply broken characters I couldn’t help but care about.”
Dennis from Scaredstraightreads (IG)
Praise for the Burnt Sparrow trilogy:
“it’s hard not to see an insular, frightened contemporary America in “Burnt Sparrow: We Are Always Tender With Our Dead”: Eric LaRocca’s at-times masterful homage to Shirley Jackson.”
Chicago Tribune
“We Are Always Tender with Our Dead is a new level for one of horror’s most important rising voices, and deserves to be remembered as one of the most important novels in the genre in 2025.”
Dread Central
“One of horror’s brightest rising stars is on the other side of the threshold, ready to show us all his first epic in the genre. Step across with LaRocca, and you’ll be rewarded, whether you’re a newcomer or a longtime fan.”
Fangoria
“The first book in LaRocca’s Burnt Sparrow trilogy of novels might end up being the most brutal book released by a major publisher this year. Combining small-town secrets with absolutely unflinching studies in transgression and depravity, it’s the boldest and best thing LaRocca’s written yet.”
Paste Magazine
“Expertly balancing extreme disgust and awe-inspiring wonder, LaRocca pushes readers to their limit with his use of graphic and illicit sex and violence, making them squirm with intense discomfort, forcing them to confront the truth about the horrors all humans inflict, especially on those they love the most. The results? Mesmerizing. The thought of waiting for book two? Unbearable.”
Booklist, starred review
“LaRocca stretches stylistically with this novel, showing impressive artistic growth and a true feel for characters who seem wildly disparate but are in fact closer than they seem. This book will appeal to horror fans looking for lyrical writing and confrontational self-examination; it feasts on insecurities and fear while reminding readers of their shared humanity.”
Library Journal, Starred Review
“LaRocca creates a lushly gothic atmosphere that smothers both the reader and his characters… Only those with iron stomachs need apply.”
Publishers Weekly
“This is small town hell on steroids: Burnt Sparrow is somewhere around the corner that you never want to even pass by. The beautiful writing of Eric Larocca makes this tale of grief, violence and perversion (a lot of it) a very strangely beautiful journey into darkness. It reminds me of Poppy Z. Brite at her most brutal, vile and best. Unflinching and relentless body and social horror, with a nod to Derry and unspeakable desire.”
Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night and A Sunny Place for Shady People
“Not since Twin Peaks has there been a town quite like Burnt Sparrow, where nightmares, secrets, cruelty, and longing are the currency. Your visit will be harrowing and it will cut you to the quick, but you’ll want to return as soon as possible.”
Paul Tremblay, author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts
“Any time I read an Eric LaRocca book, I feel like I’ve been brutalized. Your reaction to that sentence will determine whether or not this book is for you. Full of transgressive horror and broken people, its greatest strength is in its psychology. How eager are we to be persuaded to see others as inhuman, so we don’t have to care what happens to them?”
Christopher Golden, author of The Night Birds and The House of Last Resort
“The Poet Laureate of Pestilence, Eric LaRocca, impales his readers on the white picket fences of David Lynch country with We Are Always Tender with Our Dead, shifting his transgressive eye toward the toxic-bucolic small town of Burnt Sparrow, where he summons a particular poetry in tragedy, transcendence in grief, and elegance in the most brutal of violence.”
Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes and What Kind of Mother
“Eric LaRocca is one of the best horror voices to emerge in the last few years. We Are Always Tender with Our Dead is his finest work to date, filled with relentless darkness, but beauty too. The story and characters will stay with you in your dreams long after you’ve finished it.”
Richard Kadrey, author of The Pale House Devil and the Sandman Slim series
“Blending the grotesque and the sublime, We Are Always Tender with Our Dead moves with the callous logic of a nightmare. LaRocca initiates us into his newest trilogy with a haunting meditation on affliction, grief, and the darkness that lurks beneath the bonds that tie—or trap—the residents of Burnt Sparrow to one another.”
Elle Nash, author of Deliver Me and Gag Reflex
“With We Are Always Tender with Our Dead, Eric LaRocca adds to his already remarkable body of work. Wielding his graceful prose with the deftness of a surgeon holding a scalpel, LaRocca cuts to the beating, bloody heart of a small New England town shocked by an act of unexpected brutality, then examines the network of consequences that results. In the process, he finds savagery, sorrow, beauty, and much, much more. The first in a trilogy, this novel signals an exciting new phase in Eric LaRocca’s fiction. I can’t wait for what comes next.”
John Langan, author of Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions and The Fisherman
“LaRocca is a maestro of the horrific, surreal, and uncanny, and his work never fails to illuminate the dark epicenter of the human condition while offering the suggestion of hope—maybe. Every tale is one that will leave you shaking and breathless, yet like a car wreck, you’re helpless to look away.”
Ronald Malfi, author of Senseless and Come with Me
“A devastating, sweaty nightmare from the master of Uncomfortable Things: this book is, as the title suggests, both tender and cruel and written with that signature LaRocca melancholic violence I’ve come to love so much about his work. A beautiful, nasty wee novel.”
Gemma Amor, author of Dear Laura and Itch!
