Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Gravewood by Kelly Andrew, which releases on April 7th 2026.

Shea Parker has lived her entire life in the shadow of the Gravewood, an impassable forest that’s cut off her town from the rest of the world. With resources limited and supplies scarce, Shea is forced to carefully ration her hearing aid batteries. When her stash runs out, she’ll be left in the silence.

Desperate, Shea turns to the only person who can help — Oliver Lysander, the volatile leader of a vampiric gang that rules the Gravewood.

The arrangement between Shea and Lysander starts off simply enough. She gives him her blood. He tracks down batteries. They don’t cross any lines. They don’t make it personal. But when Shea’s best friend is lured into the Gravewood, her disappearance brings her older brother home from the frontlines. Asher Thorley is willing to do whatever it takes to find his sister, even if it means holding Shea’s ugliest secrets over her head.

Ever an opportunist, Lysander renegotiates the terms of their deal. If Asher takes out Lysander’s vampire rival, Lysander will help him find his sister. And if Shea agrees to Turn, Lysander will give her a cure for her ailing mother. For the first time ever, Shea finds herself leaving home. Swallowed up in the dreamlike dark of the Gravewood and traveling in the company of killers, it isn’t long before she risks becoming one herself.

© Kelly Andrew, reprinted with permission of Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Trade Publishing

THE BEGINNING . . .

Initiation nights are always a bore.

The great hall of Mercy Ridge floods with runaways, led in from the cold like pigs to a slaughter. They stand in a silent line, backs against the wall and faces downturned. Hungry. Cold. Not a single one of them is impressive. They rarely are. This far north, the valley towns churn out nothing but errant schoolboys and bored pubes­cents, wayward youths sick of life in the rural hinterlands. Boys, not men, cowering in fear each time a wolf howls.

It isn’t the wolves that scare them.

Not really.

It’s the boy on the hearth, thin as a rail and quiet as a wraith. Oliver Lysander doesn’t need a mirror to know what it is they see when they look at him: heavily inked hands and an unsmiling face, his features uncanny, like a baroque artist’s rendering of a human. A little too pretty. A little too pale.

A little too hungry.

The boy directly before him is the last of tonight’s hopefuls. He isn’t privy to the bloody thoughts that pulse in Lysander’s head, or the way Lysander imagines sinking his teeth into his throat. If he was— if he had any idea at all— the boy would turn and run.

He’d take his chance with the wolves.

Like the previous initiate, there is nothing about this particular boy that Lysander likes. This one is from Little Hill— a tiny, dull‑as‑dirt town just south of the mountain. Lysander can tell because he’s dressed in the hideous uniform of Little Hill’s stuffy Hornbeam Hall, the bare oak crest silver against a jacket the color of mud.

His name is Tristan, like fair Iseult’s ill-fated knight. Last name Choi. His face is bloodless, pale. His hands open and close in trem­bling fists. At Lysander’s back, his own fingers twitch in a subconscious imitation.

He has never been able to help himself from mimicking his prey.

“You’re afraid of me.” He doesn’t pose it as a question, and so maybe that’s why Tristan doesn’t answer. The silence irks him any­way. “Don’t stand there and stare. Say something.”

“I’m not,” gasps Tristan, and he sounds nothing at all like a knight. “I’m not afraid.”

Lysander peers down at him, unconvinced. “I don’t need liars in my crew. I need people I can trust.”

Nearby, Lysander’s lieutenant makes a sound that is very nearly a groan. Cyrus Talbot stands propped against the adjacent wall, his face bloodless and his eyes dull. Desiccated, the way Lysander is des­iccating. Starved, the way Lysander is starving. Neither of them has fed tonight, and it’s making them both tetchy.

“There’s no need to drag this out,” Cyrus says. “Either he’s in or he’s not.”

The silent implication hangs between them: Either he lives or he dies. Cyrus is clearly hoping for the latter. His mouth is already full of teeth.

In the room’s carpeted quiet, Tristan’s heart beats faster. “I think I’d make a valuable part of the crew,” he says. It comes out in a rush, words bumping one into the other.

Lysander drags his gaze back toward this boy- who‑is‑not‑a‑knight, considering him anew. “Valuable.” He mulls it over, pinning Tristan in his stare. “The Spartans were considered to have the strongest army in ancient Greece. Their battles were fought in a phalanx. Have you covered that in school?”

Tristan glances between him and Cyrus. “No.”

“No, of course not,” says Lysander. “God forbid they teach you history. It’s a tactical formation. Heavily armed infantry would stand shoulder to shoulder, several ranks deep. Linked together, they became a single entity. They moved as one. They killed as one. When the enemy pushed, they’d push back. Can you stand?”

Tristan swallows. “Yes.”

“Can you push?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re valuable. That’s not the question I’m asking. What I want to know is whether you’re loyal.”

“I am,” says Tristan, without missing a beat.

“Maybe to someone,” agrees Lysander. “But will you be loyal to me?”

Cyrus grins, teeth sharp. “He has trust issues.”

Lysander ignores his lieutenant, watching Tristan fidget under his gaze. “Here’s what I think— you’re here tonight because you’re running from something.”

“Who isn’t?” asks Tristan.

“Me,” he counters, though this is a lie.

Oliver Lysander had run so far, he ran all the way here— to damp, dull New Hampshire. To the belly of Mercy Mountain, perennially frozen and perpetually dark. He dug out a home for himself in the shell of the old ski lodge and then assembled his crew from the ground up. Cyrus first, and then the rest. The Mercy Boys, his very own army. Ragtag and runaway and impossible to call to heel, but loyal to the bone. He needs them loyal. He needs them united— a single defensive entity. One day, the thing that chased him so far north will come looking. If it finds him alone, it’ll destroy him.

He doesn’t plan to let it.

“Tell me what you’re running from and maybe we’ll keep you around.”

Tristan’s throat bobs in a swallow. Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to say. Lysander can just make out the wild flutter of the boy’s pulse in the soft curve of his neck. He can hear it, palpitating through his veins in frantic ticks. He can smell it, ambrosia sweet.

His mouth waters.

“I graduate this year,” says Tristan. “My brother went to univer­sity, but my grades— my family expects me to enlist.”

“And you’re afraid to be on the front lines,” guesses Lysander.

Tristan balks. “That’s not—”

“You think this is the easy way out. Sleeping all day. Feeding all night. No responsibility to anything, or anyone.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to. I’ve seen it before. No one wants to hunt us and die. Not when they could be us and live. You’re not special, you’re—”

“I don’t want to die for something I don’t believe in,” snaps Tristan, cutting him off.

It’s a pretty answer. A noble answer, full of conviction. Still, Lysander can hear the avoidance in it. The way Tristan skirts around admitting the whole truth. There’s something else. Something he’s too ashamed to admit. Here, now, is what he’s been looking for. These are the sorts of recruits Lysander needs.

The ones who have already shut the door behind them.

“Not everyone survives,” Lysander says. “Sometimes the Rot gets into your head instead of your blood. Sometimes it breaks you.”

Tristan’s eyes dart to Cyrus. “What does— Does this mean I’m in?”

Decisions, decisions. In or out. Live or die. Mercy Boy or carrion. The Rot is in everything. The beasts. The trees. The boys. They drink it up from the groundwater, let the hunger take hold.

If Tristan is in, he’ll live here at Mercy Ridge. If he’s not, they’ll cast him out and let the wolves have his body, let the forest gnaw on his bones. Either way, Tristan Choi won’t be leaving the forest again.

“Your membership is conditional.”

He watches as some of Tristan’s courage flags. “Conditional on what?”

“On what happens when you drink from the well.”

“Finally,” crows Cyrus, springing from the wall. “I can take him there.”

The well, as it were, is more of a pump. It sits in the courtyard, rusted and ugly and girded in lichen. Its pipes run deep, pulling from the same water that feeds the forest. The same spring- fed poison that gave the trees teeth. It gives them teeth, too— those who call the forest home. It makes them hungry. Sharp. Cold. Or else it consumes them.

Like he told Tristan, not everyone Turns.

“Thank you,” says Tristan as Cyrus ushers him toward the exit. He sounds a little regretful, the full weight of what he’s asked for dropping down on him like an axe. Cyrus tosses a knowing smirk at Lysander as he slings an arm over Tristan’s shoulder. There’s no undoing what’s about to be done, and both of them know it.

“I love an initiation.” Cyrus crooks his elbow, hooking Tristan in close. “It’s always a good time. Come on, kid, let’s go see how gods are made.”

The door skids slowly shut in their wake. Cold creeps in through the crack.

Outside, the hall is empty. Through peels of paint along the blacked- out windows, Lysander can just see the first few tinges of dawn. A pale, ashy light he’s never felt upon his skin. He sinks into an empty chair by the hearth, kicking out his boots. Letting the fatigue crawl into him. He’s only eighteen, but he feels a thousand years old. Like he carries the forest in his chest.

He shuts his eyes. Jabs a finger at his temple. He wishes for a sleep that won’t come. He’s not immortal— not in the storybook sense— but the possibility of eons stretches tauntingly before him regardless. A lifetime in the dark.

Alone.

“Hello?”

He jolts immediately to his feet.

A girl is there, standing in the doorway where there should have been no one. Silent, when he should have heard her approach. She looks very small between the room’s wide white columns. The lights of the chandelier emblazon her features, turning her elfin in the gloom.

He knows he ought to say something. Something clever. Something cutting. Instead, he holds himself still and charts her in silence. Her hair is a mousy blonde, cut just beneath her chin. She’s dressed similarly to Tristan Choi— in Hornbeam colors. A brown jacket. A pleated skirt. A regimental tie and scuffed leather shoes.

The hunger within him comes screaming to the surface. Not because he didn’t expect to see her here— there have been girls at initiation before— but because of her hand, held out like an offering between them. A deep gash runs across her palm. Blood gathers in the shallow creases, red and tempting.

He stares, and she stares back. He knows what it is she sees. There’s a hard pulse of hunger behind his eyes, an ache that chips at his control. When he gets like this— ravenous— his appetite leaves him bruised all over.

He knows what they call him, down in the valley towns— knows why they cross themselves when they pass too close to the trees, why they whisper his name in the midnight dark.

If the Gravewood is hell on earth, then he is its devil.

“That’s quite an entrance,” he says, doing what he can to ignore the trickle of blood along her fingers. “I’m curious to hear how you made it to the lodge in one piece.”

“I walked.” Her voice is low and sweet, an unplaceable accent softening its edges. His intrigue intensifies.

“Alone?”

“Do you see anyone else?”

It comes out combative— more so, perhaps, than she meant it to. Her face betrays nothing, but he can hear her heart hammering against her rib cage. His gives a single, hard thump in reply. A wordless call-and-response that leaves him rattled.

“You should never have made it here on your own. The trees in this part of the woods are carnivorous. They whisper all kinds of things when the wind blows.”

The girl’s shoulder lifts in a shrug. “I must not have heard them.”

Ridiculously, he finds himself biting back a smile. He shouldn’t be smiling at her impertinence— he should be throwing her to the wolves.

“I’m impressed,” he says instead. He means it. “I’ve seen hard­ened forest rangers follow the voice of a loved one into the pines.”

There’s a beat, during which he can see her fitting his words together. Then, “Maybe I have a secret weapon.”

This time, his smile breaks loose of its own volition. “Maybe you do.”

Silence falls again. She doesn’t rush to fill it, and so neither does he. He listens to the hard beat of her heart in the quiet. He tries to imagine her in the woods all alone, ignoring the beckoning of the birch trees, the hungry pleading of the ancient hemlocks— faces of the devoured grafted into their trunks. She stares back at him all the while, her blood gathering at her fingertips. He clears his throat.

“Unfortunately, you’re too late. I’ve filled all available slots.”

She blinks, surprised. “I’m not here to Turn.”

His curiosity is so deep, it’s tectonic. He wonders what her blood would taste like against the flat of his tongue. He wonders if Achilles knew, upon meeting Patroclus, that it would end in tragedy. If he went in with both eyes open anyway.

“I assume you have a name,” he says.

“It’s Shea.”

He likes how it sounds. One syllable, soft as a gasp.

“And you know who I am.”

“I do. You’re the Gravewood D—”

“Lys.” One syllable. Sharp as a knife. He angles his head to the side— watches her swallow his name the way he swallowed hers. The whole room smells like blood. It makes him feel stark rav­ing mad.

“If you’re not here to Turn, then you must have a death wish.”

“I don’t want to die.”

The slight quiver in her voice narrows his focus. Suddenly, all he can see is her. All he can hear is her. The too- fast clip of her heart. The frantic rush of her pulse. The soft plink of her blood dripping to the floor. In that moment— her eyes shining with a resolve he feels all the way down in his gut— she doesn’t look like an obstinate girl from Little Hill. She looks like ruination.

If he were smart, he’d send her away.

“If you’re not here to die and you’re not here to Turn, then why come at all?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She holds her hand flat between them. Her palm is red all over. “I’m here to make you a deal.”

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Gravewood’ by Kelly Andrew appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

In these stories, dear student, retribution visits a lothario lecturer; the sinister truth is revealed about a missing professor; a forsaken lover uses a séance for revenge; an obsession blooms about a possible illicit affair; two graduates exhume the secrets of a reclusive scholar; horrors are uncovered in an obscure academic department; five hopeful initiates must complete a murderous task and much more!

In These Hallowed Halls is a brand-new stories from Olivie Blake, M.L. Rio, David Bell, Susie Yang, Layne Fargo, J.T. Ellison, James Tate Hill, Kelly Andrew, Phoebe Wynne, Kate Weinberg, Helen Grant, and Tori Bovalino.

INTRODUCTION
Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane

Dark Academia.

What do those words conjure up for you? Mysterious and dangerous occurrences in various seats of learning? Students, and sometimes their tutors, in peril? Murder? Magic? Ghosts? Dusty books in old libraries? Clandestine cults and secret societies devoted to ancient rituals? All or none of the above?

If you’re new to the subject, you’ve picked the perfect place to start. If you’re already a fan, then we think you’re going to love what we’ve got in store for you within these pages! In the last few years the phenomenon of Dark Academia has, quite literally, exploded. Fuelled by book clubs on social media platforms like Tumblr and Instagram, where people discuss classic and Gothic books, this wave developed into a subculture in its own right that grew even more popular during the pandemic and lockdowns. Let’s face it, there wasn’t much else to do during those times than watch things and read.

Books like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, the Harry Potter series and classics such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and the ghost stories of M. R. James have all been credited as inspiring the trend, as well as films like Love Story, Dead Poets Society and Cruel Intentions, not to mention more recent TV shows like A Discovery of Witches (based on the excellent novels by Deborah Harkness), A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Queen’s Gambit, which all helped to fan the flames.

So, you can imagine our delight when we were asked to edit this anthology and gather together some of the finest exponents of this type of fiction around. Author of The Atlas Six and The Atlas Paradox, Olivie Blake, brings you a timely and unique social commentary – which still connects to the past – in her story “Pythia”, while M. L. Rio (If We Were Villains) reminds us of the pitfalls and potential benefits of being in the wrong place at the right time – or perhaps that should be the right place at the wrong time? – in “Weekend at Bertie’s”.
The author who brought you novels such as Good Girls Lie and Her Dark Lies, J. T. Ellison, and Tori Bovalino – who wrote The Devil Makes Three and Not Good for Maidens – show us the real dark side of Dark Academia in “X House” and “Phobos” respectively. Whereas Helen Grant (Ghost and Too Near the Dead), Layne Fargo (Temper and They Never Learn) and Kelly Andrew (The Whispering Dark) introduce us to the disturbing strangeness of the subject in “The Professor of Ontography”, “The Ravages” and “The Hare and the Hound”.
Both Kate Weinberg and James Tate Hill return us to the worlds of their books (The Truants, and Blind Man’s Buff, Academy Gothic) in their stories “1000 Ships” and “Sabbatical”. Author of Kill All Your Darlings and The Finalists, David Bell, presents us with a thought-provoking tale, “Four Funerals”, that will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading it, as will Phoebe Wynne’s (Madam, The Ruins) story “Playing” and its intriguing insights. All this plus Susie Yang (White Ivy) and her meditation on relationships, secrets and longing, “The Unknowable Pleasures”.

Excellent contributions by authors writing at the top of their game, showing the full range and power of what Dark Academia can do. So, settle back in your favourite reading spot with your favourite tipple, preferably surrounded by books, and let the lessons begin!

Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane
February 2023

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