In Ten Sleep, the canyon always takes what it is owed . . .
“Open these pages and fall into a cattle drive up in the high lonesome country, where it’s not just the cattle and the work that are challenging—here there be monsters, too.”
—Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians, The Angel of Indian Lake Trilogy
Publication date June 24, 2025!
Ten Sleep is an eco-horror novel acquired by Executive Editor Diana Pho of Erewhon Books as part of a two-book deal that includes The Deading.
ABOUT TEN SLEEP
Jordan Peele’s Nope meets True Grit in Nicholas Belardes’s Ten Sleep, a supernatural modern-day western about a trio of young people on a 10-day cattle drive that leads them through a canyon haunted by ancient mysteries and savage beasts who existed long before humankind.
A young Mexican American woman detects uncanny creatures stalking her on a cattle drive toward a canyon soaked in blood in an unforgettable novel, brilliantly infusing the modern Western with spine-chilling horror . . .
When Greta Molina’s old friend Tiller offered her the job, a ten-day cattle drive across the Wyoming prairie from the ranching town of Ten Sleep, it sounded like a well-paid break. Three hundred and twenty cows and calves, two guys her age she’s known since college (Tiller and Scott), and a few long days on an ATV will give her time to sort out the mess in her head. The canyon along the trail has a history, sure, but nature has a tendency toward violence. Greta can accept that, even if it makes her insides squirm.
What Greta doesn’t know is the legacy of murder and rot that runs deep into the rocks of this land. As each night passes on the prairie, the trio faces mounting supernatural dangers: a ghost train of the damned, wild animals walking alongside dead ones—and evidence of a gigantic creature in the skies, one that’s supposedly been extinct for eons. And Tiller may be hiding even darker secrets the further they go. Safety is only ten sleeps away, but Greta soon realizes that may be too long for all of them to survive.
Nicholas Belardes’ Ten Sleep is a fresh portrayal of the American West for fans of Catriona Ward, Victor LaValle and Jordan Peele’s Nope, by a rising star in horror.