Fevered and beautiful. Coles writes as if her words are hunting each other, and she fills The Sunken, The Adored with wariness, indulgence, and a sense of murder-touched grandeur. An experience to be savored. - Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Game in Yellow Coles has proven she is no one-hit wonder with her wholly original, impossible-to-pigeonhole second novel. - Library Journal THE SUNKEN, THE ADORED captivates from the first page, when the formerly enslaved Mercy disembarks from a ship in 18th century Venice and takes up her former master's equipment and profession in the modern art of daguerreotyping. Mesmerized by her few-found freedom and struggling to free herself from the trauma of her past, Mercy throws herself into all the hedonistic pleasures Venice has to offer.but something dangerous stalks the canals, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Did it follow Mercy across the sea on the ship that brought her to Italy? Or is the danger coming from Mercy herself? Donyae Coles layers her tale brilliantly in prose at once lush, atmospheric, and mesmerically unsettling.

- Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network The Sunken, The Adored is a sumptuous, watery historical terror, presenting its horrors draped in luxurious excess while asking how long we can drown the bestial hungers within ourselves, knowing they are never truly gone. - Eden Royce, author of the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Hollow Tongue In The Sunken, The Adored, Donyae Coles writes beautifully of abominable things. This novel transports you through time, submerges you in sorrow, and floods you with fear. - Johnny Compton, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Spite House and Dead First Dark, intoxicating, disturbing: The Sunken, the Adored is a rare jewel of a book that will hook its many tentacles into your heart and brain and make its home there. Coles is an author to watch; I cannot wait to see what other beautiful and unsettling things she will dream up next. - Johanna Van Veen, author of My Darling Dreadful Thing A glorious cathedral of incense and viscera. No one knows how to haunt, horrify, and romance a reader like Coles. This book wrapped me into its feverish arms and whispered endless nightmares.

I loved every minute of it. - Kristy Park Kulski, Bram Stoker nominated author and editor of Silk & Sinew Utterly and darkly seductive. Coles paints for us a fever-dream of Venice, layered with decadence and madness and insatiable hungers. - Sunyi Dean, Author of The Book Eaters Bram Stoker Award-nominee Coles' evocative and atmospheric follow-up to Midnight Rooms is an inventive blend of gothic fiction and cosmic horror, offering twists and turns aplenty as Mercy tries to evade the menacing entity that haunts her. - Booklist.