Highblood

Julieta Vanterroso is the youngest daughter of a powerful, bloodthirsty family on Colombia's Caribbean coast with a dynasty of distilling the finest blood in the land into a widely consumed cocktail called Sanguina.

When Julieta is born feral and with an appetite for blood, her grandmother-- the family's storied matriarch Julia Vanterroso--hires Enriqueta, a witch from a nearby village who appears to tame Julieta with her supernatural powers.

But though Julieta is trained by the Vanterroso clan in the rituals of high society and promised in marriage to the son of another local elite, her monstrous hunger still lurks beneath the surface. When her beloved Enriqueta dies, Julieta steals a book on forbidden magic from her grandmother's private library and uses it to summon Mamá Codex, an ancestral spirit who urges her to disrupt her family's legacy from within by destroying her own grandmother . . .

Winner of the 2024 Elisa Mújica Narrative Prize, HIGHBLOOD blends the pagan, tropical, festive folklore of Barranquilla's carnival and Afro Caribbean traditions with a chilling gothic horror plot filled with vampires, ghosts, rituals, and death. A striking example of the imaginative and creative power of emerging Colombian literature and its constant ability to seduce and surprise.