He Always Comes Back: A Novel

Summary

He Always Comes Back is a razor-sharp slasher perfect for fans of Riley Sager or the Scream franchise. Self-aware and thrilling, it's an ode to the genre's classics and a clever portrait of pop culture's evolving mistreatment of final girls.

A year after surviving the massacre that claimed six of her friends, Billie Danvers is still drowning in guilt, dodging the morbid curiosity of strangers, and searching for answers about that fatal night. But when the killer who upended her life, Carson Cutler, resurfaces and attacks her adoptive family, Billie learns a terrifying truth: she's a Kirkbride, the youngest daughter in a bloodline of women hunted by Cutler for generations.

Every few years, he returns to the Kirkbride family to finish what he started. He kills everyone around them and leaves the Kirkbride women alive to suffer—at least until the next attack.

Determined to break the cycle, Billie and her adoptive sister Lulu head to Kirktown, Billie's ancestral home turned true-crime tourist trap, in search of answers. But the deeper they dig into the Kirkbride history, the clearer it becomes that Cutler's legacy runs deeper—and darker—than anyone imagined.

Chilling and razor sharp, He Always Comes Back is a smart, propulsive slasher about family, infamy, and the monsters we make of both killers and survivors.