Devilwood: A Novel

by Tom Franklin

A horrifying crime brings a long legacy of evil to light in this chilling Southern noir from the beloved, New York Times bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.

There’s something wrong in those woods . . .

Deep in the woods of rural Alabama, Officer Wilbur “The Cow Man” Miller and his dog, Trixie, stumble upon a nightmare scene of chaos and carnage. Local outcast Shirley Dye lies dead on the floor of her home, her body mangled by the blood-crazed cats locked inside with her. But was her gruesome death a tragic accident, or something far more sinister?

Having grown up in the same woods, raised on legends of deadly black panthers and insidious demons, Miller is no stranger to the darkness that gathers beneath the trees. But as he gets pulled into the investigation, the boundaries between reality and myth a feral white cat haunts the crime scene, delivering grotesque offerings to the dead woman’s door, and inhuman screams echo in the darkest hours of the night, leaving Miller to wonder exactly what kind of monster Shirley faced.

Not all monsters are supernatural the Dye home has long been a refuge for shady characters including two desperate cousins on the run from the law, a local undertaker with secrets he’s keeping close to his chest, and a charismatic preacher who warns that the Devil himself lurks just inside the tree line. Shirley’s death isn’t the first that cursed corner of the woods has seen, and as the mystery deepens, Miller must untangle the blood-soaked history of the land from the crimes of the present.

With lyrical storytelling and razor-sharp prose, Devilwood is a masterfully tense novel where the lines between human predator and supernatural evil blur, and where the sins of the past are never, ever buried deep enough.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication February 2, 2027

About the author

Tom Franklin was born and raised in Dickinson, Alabama. He held various jobs as a struggling writer living in South Alabama, including working as a heavy-equipment operator in a grit factory, a construction inspector in a chemical plant and a clerk in a hospital morgue. In 1997 he received his MFA from the University of Arkansas. His first book, Poachers was named as a Best First Book of Fiction by Esquire and Franklin received a 1999 Edgar Award for the title story. Franklin has published two novels: Hell at the Breech, published in 2003 and Smonk published in 2006. The recipient of the 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, Franklin now teaches in the University of Mississippi's MFA program and lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly, and their children.