Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
A Darkly Funny, Gory, and Ghostly Horror Novel
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
New York Times 100 Notable Books for 2025
Goodreads Choice Award Finalist for Horror
USA TODAY Best Books of 2025
Library Journal Best Books of 2025
Spotify Best Horror Books of 2025
Kobo Best Horror Books of 2025
Book Riot Best Books of 2025
Los Angeles Public Library Best Fiction of 2025
Google Play Best Horror Novel of 2025
"A compelling, gory, ghostly romp."
—Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie
"This is what it felt like to live in New York City during lockdown: haunted, absurd, terrifying, ridiculous, and full of hungry ghosts."
—Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House
In this explosive horror novel, a woman is haunted by inner trauma, hungry ghosts, and a serial killer as she confronts the brutal violence experienced by East Asians during the pandemic.
Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train.
Before fleeing the scene, the murderer shouted two words: bat eater.
So the bloody messes don’t really bother Cora—she’s more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner, and the bite marks on her coffee table. Of course, ever since Delilah was killed in front of her, Cora can’t be sure what's real and what’s in her head.
She pushes away all feelings and ignores the advice of her aunt to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open. But she can't ignore the dread in her stomach as she keeps finding bat carcasses at crime scenes, or the scary fact that all her recent cleanups have been the bodies of East Asian women.
As Cora will soon learn, you can’t just ignore hungry ghosts.
For fans of Stephen Graham Jones and Gretchen Felker-Martin, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a wildly original, darkly humorous, and subversive contemporary novel from a striking new voice in horror.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
YA author Baker (The Scarlet Alchemist) puts a supernatural twist on the early days of Covid in her searing adult debut. Cora Zeng is an underemployed art history major-turned New York City crime scene cleaner, eking out a living scrubbing bodies off the walls. In early 2020, she's disconcerted to notice an uptick in murdered Asian women. Cora, who is mixed-race, does not believe in either Asian ghost stories or Western religion and always does what her aunties tell her to do—otherwise they might place her back in the psychiatric unit. Then her half sister, Delilah, is murdered in a hate crime, and Cora thinks she sees Delilah's ghost in their shared apartment. As the Hungry Ghost Festival approaches, she starts seeing more and more restless spirits. She confesses these visions to her fellow cleaners, Harvey and Yifei, who help her hatch a plan to hold a feast for the ghosts, even as people around them are picked off one by one. Baker successfully uses fear, both supernatural and human, to shine a spotlight on anti-Asian hate. Fans of creepy ghost stories and social horror will want to snap this up.
