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Titan signs cannibal-horror thriller debut from Hunter Burke and N L Lavin
Titan has signed a Louisiana-set cannibal-horror thriller debut from the writing duo of Hollywood actor Hunter Burke and child and adolescent psychiatrist N L Lavin. Fiction editor Rufus Purdy acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (plus audio) to Of Flesh and Blood via Megan Matti at Crooked Lane Books. The book is scheduled to publish in June 2025.
The synopsis reads: "Set 10 years after the death of the Cajun Cannibal, a flesh-eating serial killer who consumed eight victims before taking his own life, the novel follows a forensic psychiatrist’s case study into the cannibal’s murders. When identical killings start to occur, questions about what really happened back then resurface, leading the psychiatrist into terrifying and dangerous levels of obsession. Told through the pages of the psychiatrist’s case study, the story is part psychological horror, part serial-killer thriller."
Burke, originally from Broussard, Louisiana, is an actor known for Sweet Magnolias (2020), Claws (2017), The Big Short (2015) and Bosch (2014). Lavin is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, based in Lafayette, Louisiana, whose work informs the fictional narratives he writes.
Burke and Lavin said: “We are thrilled to send our Of Flesh and Blood baby, born of the whisky-fuelled, fireside tall-tale tradition of our Cajun forebears, out into the world. For two South Louisiana yanks who’ve spent decades gazing across the pond for inspiration from the likes of the Beatles to Radiohead to Agatha Christie, being able to export our brand of bayou gothic murderous mayhem to the UK feels like the most surreal cultural exchange programme we could imagine.”
Purdy said: “From the moment I started to read Of Flesh and Blood, I loved it. It’s so much more than just a horror story–though, rest assured, things do get pretty horrific–and the journey the novel takes readers on, through sinister bayous overhung with cypress trees and Spanish moss to dusty towns that bake in treacly, mosquito-filled air, will leave them with a greater understanding of Louisiana and what it is to be Cajun.”
