Black Flame
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An instant USA Today bestseller!
One woman's deadly obsession with a haunted archival film precipitates her undoing in Black Flame, from the author of Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin.
A cursed film. A haunted past. A deadly secret.
The Baroness, an infamous exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer—deeply closeted and pathologically repressed—begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.
As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real, and is happening to her—and that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control.
Until it all fades to black, and all that remains is a voice asking a question Ellen can’t answer but can’t get out of her mind: Do you want it? More than anything?
Also by Gretchen Felker-Martin:
Manhunt
Cuckoo
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This brutal, unsparing horror novel from Felker-Martin (Manhunt) brings film, queer history, and unspeakable terror together in mid-1980s New York City. Ellen Kramer, a closeted archivist working at the Path Foundation, an embattled film restoration company, has been tasked with restoring Black Flame, a legendary lost film from Weimar-era Germany. As she grapples with her repressed sexuality, her work results in her consciousness becoming warped by horrific visions. Her daily life and relationships begin to disintegrate as she uncovers the truth behind Black Flame—and her own history. After the Path Foundation receives blowback for their restoration of a racist movie, Ellen is given the opportunity to share Black Flame with the world to help divert the PR storm, resulting in a terrible reckoning as she comes to terms with the consequences of things kept hidden from polite society—and from herself. Felker-Martin's stunning prose is equal parts grotesque and lyrical as she turns an unflinching gaze on the extremes of compulsion and desire on the way to a truly devastating climax. The story threads the difficult needle of presenting unsympathetic characters and complicated relationships without compromising its vision, and the results are spectacular. Readers will be unable to shake this one soon.
