Heartsnare

The Yorkshire city of Willingsley is full of straight-shooting, gobby northern folk going about their day to day lives, with their love affairs, their health problems and all of life’s other nonsense grinding on day after day. And then, suddenly, monsters come to town and people start dying. At the center of it all is Eric Mayfair, a twenty-something who a year ago was facing imminent heart failure. Fatal. Terminal. That’s what the doctors said. And then, miraculously, Eric got better. He doesn’t know how. No one does. All he knows is he has a new heart, a great black leach of a thing embedded in his chest that no one else seems to see. Then someone close to Eric is murdered and, in his search for answers, Eric uncovers an unseen world of monsters, dark powers and deadly secrets.

The first book in the Umbraverse series!

"Wielding a scalpel forged from bone and shadow, Steven B. Williams slices open the skin of BBC soap-opera northern England and peels it back to expose an occult world. Here are bodybuilding supplements brewed from the essence of darkness, parasitic shadow hearts that grant their hosts unimaginable powers, shape-changing exiles from interdicted planets, and murderous demonic beings intent on bringing the universe crashing down around them. All this cosmic phantasmagoria is grounded in the everyday life of Eric Mayfair, hapless fuckup, and his loving, sarcastic mum. It's a heady mix and I can't wait for the sequel." - Alex Jeffers, author of Not Here. Not Now. and That Door Is a Mischief

"Heartsnare is a headlong tumble into a world of men - and monsters. Yorkshire banter mixes with supernatural horror and dark, bloody romance in a visceral journey into the power of love and memory." - John Howard, author of The Lustre of Time and Secret Europe