In this Appalachian horror novel, two estranged siblings become trapped in a convenience store under attack by a monster from the mountains who feasts on guilty hearts.
Rattle, rattle in the dark…
The mountain’s bones seek out a heart.
Jane has not spoken to her brother Thomas since the accident that nearly killed them both. Their drive from college through the North Georgia mountains is uncomfortably silent, until they stop at a roadside convenience store, where a man stumbles in with a mutilated body, claiming to have been attacked by a monster.
At first, no one believes the man’s ravings, but when the next person to leave the store is brutally killed, they fear that local legend might be true:
There’s a beast in these mountains who feasts on guilty hearts… and someone among them has lured it out of hiding.
Jane and Thomas each harbor secrets, but so do the other patrons, and as the monster claims more hearts, the survivors turn on each other, desperate to save themselves by uncovering the guiltiest among them.
If the siblings can’t overcome the rift between them, they’ll surely become the monster’s next victims…or worse, become monsters themselves.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/246928000-when-the-night-comes-knocking
i bought this book and here is my honest review
when on the way to thanksgiving dinner in the middle of the woods Thomas and Jane were already dreading the trip having to drive together was the last thing wanted to do. but having to stop at a random gas station on the way was the worst thing they had to do. When a mimic had been awoken in the mountains they were now trapped in the gas station with strangers wondering how to get out and not die in the process. but when the mimic gets its way into the gas station no one is safe. will the ones who are alive stay alive or will they end up dead like the others.
Katherine Daniel is a fiction writer based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she loves to explore the dark and twisty parts of what it means to be human through storytelling. Her debut novel “When the Night Comes Knocking” will be published on October 20th, 2026 in the US and on November 19th, 2026 in the UK.
