The Girl with the Barbed Wire Hair

For almost 20 years, Carlton Mellick III has been writing some of the strangest and most compelling novels the bizarro fiction genre has to offer. Described as one of the top 40 science-fiction writers under the age of 40 by The Guardian and "one of the most original novelists working today" by extreme horror legend Edward Lee, Mellick returns with a haunting tale of obsession, desperation, loneliness, and depravity.

There is a girl who lives in the alley behind the old, abandoned fire station. She is always covered in ash and grime, cuts and bruises on her arms and legs, the skirt of her school uniform caked in dirt and ripped into tatters. Her hair is a mess of dreadlocks the color of rusted metal, growing like vines all the way down to her ankles. She was once human, but not anymore. She's become a feral creature with an undying thirst for blood and revenge. Everyone at school knows to stay away from her. There are rumors that anyone who crosses her path will be murdered and never heard from again, their throats torn out by the long strands of barbed wire that grow from her head like hair.

But when she meets a young boy named Yusuke, the first person to ever show her an ounce of human kindness, her desire for revenge turns to feelings of love. And she will do whatever it takes to win his heart, even if she has to rip it from his chest in order to obtain it.

From the author of Cannibals of Candyland and The Terrible Thing That Happens, comes a depraved love story inspired by Japanese cult horror films such as Ringu and Ju-on: the Grudge.