Sacrificial Animals
published August 20, 2024
2025 Libby Book Awards – Finalist for Best Horror
2025 Nebraska Book Awards – Fiction Honor
2024 Otherwise Award – Longlisted
Barnes & Noble, Best Horror Books of 2024
Esquire, Best Horror Books of 2024
Paste Magazine, Best Horror Books of 2024
New York Public Library, Best Books for Adults 2024
CrimeReads, Best Gothic Novels of 2024
The New York Times, Best Horror of the Year 2024 (So Far)
Vulture, Best Horror Books of 2024 (So Far)
“An unremittingly gloomy and oppressive story that will haunt you for days… Pedersen is a great writer with a strong voice and an obvious love of language… [Sacrificial Animals] establishes Pedersen as a future master of speculative fiction.” – The New York Times
“Dark and bone-chillingly bloody… Sacrificial Animals is remarkable in its keen barbarism, the author’s blending of the ordinary violence of rural life with the gravity of a Chinese myth… The novel’s final pages are a wild frenzy of beauty, vengeance and viscera.” – LA Times
“Tense, lush, and laced with beautifully engineered dread, [Sacrificial Animals] is a special book, one that horror fans everywhere should pick up as soon as possible, because you don’t want to miss a moment of what this author has got to show you.” – Paste Magazine
“Unnerving and disturbing, Sacrificial Animals will creep up your spine and have you looking over your shoulder.” – B&N Reads, Best Paperbacks of August 2025
“A remarkable debut, a striking blend of American frontier stoicism and Chinese folklore.” – Vulture, Best Horror Books of 2024
“Savage in its details and saturated with dread.” – Esquire, Best Horror Books of 2024
“Readers will follow Nick as the foreboding details build, knowing full well that the tightly coiled tension will eventually explode; when it does, they will be left gasping in awe.” – Library Journal (starred)
“An assured and bloody fable heralds the arrival of a gifted new voice attuned to ancient modes of damnation.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Grisly, literary horror that isn’t afraid to show its teeth. Pedersen is sure to win fans.” – Publisher’s Weekly
“A genre mashup of Chinese mythology, supernatural horror, thriller, and Midwestern family drama, Sacrificial Animals is a breathtaking upending of the American family saga.” – Shelf Awareness
Inspired by Kailee Pedersen’s own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up alongside her family’s farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.
The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.
But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices. Nick puts the time to good use and his flirtation with Emilia quickly blooms into romance. Though not long after the affair turns intimate, Nick begins to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may have sinister, and possibly even ancient, motivations.
Punctuated by scenes from Nick’s adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.
Kailee Pedersen 