Afterbirth

By: Emma Cleary

Published by Harper, 2026-03-24

A "mommy horror" masterpiece as hypnotic as it is terrifying, bold new talent Emma Cleary's haunting and audacious literary debut reverberates with menace and the echoes of classic horror cinema. A fractured sisterhood. A disturbing transformation. A desperate obsession. Abandoning the ruins of her stalled life after an ill-omened romance, Brooke flies to Vancouver to care for her estranged sister, Izzy, who is recovering from reproductive surgery. But Izzy's rapidly decaying apartment building, its hallways stalked by an ominous crone known only as Medusa, offers little of the refuge Brooke craves. Seeking solace in the horror movies her ex-girlfriend loved, Brooke soon finds traces of horror bleeding from the screen into their lives. As old wounds reopen, strange forces begin to exert their power over the sisters, culminating in an unexpected and inexplicably accelerating pregnancy that will lock Brooke and Izzy in a nightmarish rivalry, and send one of them spiraling into dangerous obsession. Eerie, macabre, and startlingly original, Emma Cleary's stunning first novel grapples with themes of maternity, sisterhood, and bodily autonomy in the vein of bestsellers like Nightbitch, Motherthing, and Baby Teeth, and will linger in the mind long after the final page is turned.