An instant USA Today bestseller!

One woman's deadly obsession with a haunted archival film precipitates her undoing in Black Flame, from the author of Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin.

A cursed film. A haunted past. A deadly secret.

The Baroness, an infamous exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer—deeply closeted and pathologically repressed—begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.

As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real, and is happening to her—and that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control.

Until it all fades to black, and all that remains is a voice asking a question Ellen can’t answer but can’t get out of her mind: Do you want it? More than anything?

Also by Gretchen Felker-Martin:

Manhunt

Cuckoo

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.



Praise for this book

“Black Flame is depraved, shocking, and devastatingly beautiful. A hypnotic cosmic horror journey that travels both outward and in, pushing through the viscera and slime to reveal something truly profound about the nature of art itself.”

—CHUCK TINGLE, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays

"Nasty, erotic, kinky, vicious, suspenseful....Felker-Martin uses the trope of the cursed movie and creates something utterly unique that manages to horrify, beguile, and empower in equal measure. If you are going to read one horror book this year, make it this one."

—JOHANNA VAN VEEN, author of My Darling Dreadful Thing

"Black Flame is a literary razor blade raked right over the reader's eyeballs, Un Chien Adalouing the shit out us with nearly every page. Gretchen Felker-Martin is ready for her close-up, and this book further testifies to her blood red reign as horror's enfant terrible."

—CLAY MCLEOD CHAPMAN, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

"Felker-Martin’s stunning prose is equal parts grotesque and lyrical as she turns an unflinching gaze on the extremes of compulsion and desire on the way to a truly devastating climax. The story threads the difficult needle of presenting unsympathetic characters and complicated relationships without compromising its vision, and the results are spectacular."

—Publishers Weekly (STARRED review)

"Felker-Martin is the queen of gross-out sensory experiences, for her descriptions are all substance and no filler. ... there is more than enough depraved, mind-splitting terror to make a Cenobite chitter in ecstasy. ...As horrible as it is horny, Black Flame is a psychosexual horror of deviancy and transformation that packs the nastiest punch."

—Fangoria

Praise for Gretchen Felker-Martin



"Cuckoo is, like Felker-Martin's previous novel Manhunt, absolutely masterful."

—ROXANE GAY, New York Times bestselling author of The Bad Feminist

"Manhunt is a modern horror masterpiece.”

—CARMEN MARIA MACHADO, author of National Book Award finalist Her Body and Other Parties

"With [Cuckoo], Felker-Martin appoints herself the new High Priestess of splatter....A story of love, hate, and sacrifice that spares no suffering, but takes no pity."

—TONY TULATHIMUTTE, author of National Book Award finalist Rejection

“Disgustingly rendered and brilliantly imagined…. A fresh, stomach-turning take on gendered apocalypse.”

—NPR on Manhunt

"Cuckoo is a breathtaking novel of body horror; a heartbreaking, angry, terrifying, unflinching indictment of Christian America's cruelty; and it's a soaring, boundless ode to queer survival. It's flat-out mesmerizing."

—PAUL TREMBLAY, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie

“A grisly, gory, glorious work of splatterpunk social horror — and the perfect introduction to both subgenres.”

—BUSTLE on Manhunt

“Tense and frighteningly visceral, Cuckoo is a masterwork of body horror thrumming with high octane viciousness.”

—ERIC LAROCCA, author of At Dark, I Become Loathsome

“Felker-Martin can write: Manhunt expertly drops one political target after another, breaks your heart with nearly every character, and keeps up a relentless velocity— all while just being plain fun as hell.”

—TORREY PETERS, PEN/Hemingway Award winning author of Detransition, Baby




About the AuthorGRETCHEN FELKER-MARTIN is a Massachusetts-based bestselling horror author and film critic. Her debut novel, Manhunt, was named the #1 Best Book of 2022 by Vulture, and was one of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 by Esquire, Library Journal, and Paste. Her sophomore novel, Cuckoo, debuted on the USA Today bestseller list. You can read her fiction and film criticism on Patreon and in TIME, The Outline, Nylon, and more.
Title: Black Flame
Author(s): Gretchen Felker-Martin
ISBN: 9781250348029
Copyright 2025
Release Date: August 05, 2025
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Countries: United States, Canada | Learn more about available countries
Language: English
Format: ePub,mobi | Learn More about our supported formats
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