Hemlock, Melissa Faliveno
Hemlock, Melissa Faliveno
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Hemlock
A Novel

Author: Melissa Faliveno

Narrator: Kira Fixx

Unabridged: 11 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/20/2026

Synopsis

In this queer Gothic novel, a woman haunted by a dark inheritance returns to the woods where her mother vanished. Sam, finally sober and stable with a cat and a long-term boyfriend in Brooklyn, returns alone to Hemlock, her family’s deteriorating cabin deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods. But a quick, practical trip takes a turn for the worse when the rot and creak of the forest starts to creep in around the edges of Sam’s mind. It starts, as it always does, with a beer. As Sam dips back into the murky waters of dependency, the inexplicable begins to arrive at her door and her body takes on a strange new shape. As the borders of reality begin to blur, she senses she is battling something sinister—whether nested in the woods or within herself. Hemlock is a carnal coming-of-addiction, a dark sparkler about rapture, desire, transformation, and transcendence in many forms. What lives at the heart of fear—animal, monster, or man? How can we reject our own inheritance, the psychic storm that’s been coming for generations, and rebuild a new home for ourselves? In the tradition of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, Hemlock is a butch Black Swan and a novel of singular style, with all the edginess of a survival story and a simmering menace that glints from the very periphery of the page. Town & Country's Must Read Books of Winter 2026 | Most Anticipated in Autostraddle, Literary Hub, and Debutiful | Book Riot's Best Queer Books of January 2026 | Debutiful's Best Debut Books of the Year (So Far)

About Melissa Faliveno

Melissa Faliveno is a writer, editor, and teacher. The former senior editor of Poets & Writers Magazine, she has also had essays and interviews appear in BitchMedia’s magazine, the Millions, Prairie Schooner, Isthmus, DIAGRAM, and Midwestern Gothic, among others, and received a notable selection in The Best American Essays 2016. Born and raised in small-town Wisconsin, she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Tomboyland is her first book. Learn more at www.melissafaliveno.com.

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Quotes

“Utterly entrancing, Hemlock captures the insularity and expansiveness of the psyche in isolation, not unlike the teeming abundance of the forest kingdom. Here in the Northwoods, the trees close in sounding more and more like water; animals speak in words; what is human might become earthly—the earthly, supernatural. With stunning and gothic prose, in the vein of Carson McCullers, Melissa Faliveno’s debut novel reveals the world anew and, in doing so, summons within readers a revelatory sense of presence, myth, and haunting.”—T Kira Madden, author of Whidbey and Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

"Hauntingly visceral and utterly mesmerizing, Hemlock plunges into the shadowed and swirling terrain of dependence and its many faces. Melissa Faliveno weaves addiction as metamorphosis, desire as wilderness, in prose that pulses like a heartbeat. A debut of startling originality that reads like a fever dream and burrows beneath the skin. Hemlock is urgent, unapologetic, and utterly unforgettable."—Chelsea Bieker, bestselling author of Madwoman and Godshot

“Gorgeous and surprising, Hemlock's propulsive plot is fueled by equal parts Midwestern dread and Midwestern love, a combination my own Midwestern heart recognizes as home. Faliveno sets her exploration of the complicated, compelling legacies of family and place amid a great and beautiful landscape I’ve loved all my life, but that I’ve maybe never seen as vividly as I do right now, after having been shown it anew through Faliveno’s evocative prose. A spectacular debut.”—Matt Bell, author of Appleseed

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