"Delightfully morbid and surprisingly emotional" —The New York Times

A chilling and twisty horror of toxic friendships, punk rock and vampire parasites from the Bram Stoker award-winning modern master of horror and author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts.

1988, and puberty has hit Art Barbara hard - he's a painfully socially awkward teenager, underweight, acne-ridden, and bent crooked by scoliosis. Worse, he has no extra credits to get him into college. So Art starts the Pallbearers' Club, dedicated to mourning the homeless and lonely – the people with no one else to bury them. It might be a small club, unpopular and morbid, but it introduces Art to Mercy Brown, who is into bands, local history, folklore and digging up the dead.

Decades later, Art is writing his memoir to try and make sense of it all, because nothing about Mercy is simple. It's all a matter of trust, right? Their friendship twists and coils...