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Fiend
Fiend
Dec 5, 2025 3:55 AM

Author:Peter Stenson,Todd Haberkorn

Fiend

When Chase sees the little girl in umbrella socks savaging the Rottweiler, he‘s not too concerned. As someone who‘s been smoking meth every day for as long as he can remember, he‘s no stranger to such horrifying, drug-fueled hallucinations. But as he and his fellow junkies discover, the little girl is no illusion. The end of the world really has arrived. And with Chase‘s life already destroyed beyond all hope of redemption, armageddon might actually be an opportunity — a last chance to hit restart and become the person he once dreamed of being. Soon Chase is fighting to reconnect with his lost love and dreaming of becoming her hero among the ruins. But is salvation just another pipe dream?

Propelled by a blistering first-person voice and featuring a powerfully compelling anti-hero, Fiend is at once a brilliant portrait of addiction, a pitch-black comedy, and the darkest, most twisted love story you‘ve ever read — not to mention one hell of a zombie novel.

Reviews

Certain to invite comparisons to Hubert Selby and Cormac McCarthy … one scalding pressure cooker of a novel, and I advise you to buckle up and hold on tight because you're in for one hell of a ride.

—— Donald Ray Pollock

Fiend is a no-holds barred shocker with finely drawn characters suffering in every way imaginable, and Stenson imagines a lot of ways. Grimtastic.

—— Sunday Sport

Paranoia sets in, nerves become stretched, the drugs fuelling fantasies and possibilities and the book comes to an end with a sorry sense of hopelessness and despair. I loved this book and can’t wait for more from Peter.

—— SF Books

Keeps you reading by dragging you from one hammer blow to the next.

—— ImagineFX

This is the real meat. The last zombie novel you'll ever need.

—— Warren Ellis, author of Gun Machine and Twisted Little Vein

Peter Stenson has done the near impossible in delivering a savage fire-storm of a page-turner while also enabling a hard and earnest look at addiction and love. I tore through Fiend with the crazed fervor of an addict, but like all great stories these characters lingered in my thoughts long after I turned the last beautiful and brutal page.

—— Alan Heathcock, author of Volt

With a pared down snappy writing style, Fiend opens an exciting new chapter for modern horror.

—— Big Issue in the North

Not a sentence or a thought out of place. It takes over as his finest fiction to date

—— Irish Times

Remarkable freshness and immediacy ... with a lovely comedic lightness

—— Daily Mail

A lovely, thoughtful book ... alive with authentic detail, moved along by the ripples of affection and doubt that shape any life: a novel that offers the reader serious pleasure

—— Daily Telegraph

Tremendously moving and powerful

—— New Statesman

There is such elegant subtlety to this story

—— Irish Independent

The Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano claims to have written a version of the same novel throughout his career; in a sense so has Petterson, but his anguished precision is such that no one should complain

—— Telegraph

Illuminated by a clear and insightful knowledge of what it means to be human... Petterson is really a masterful depictor of contemporary life

—— Nordjyske, Denmark

I Refuse is, despite its apparent realism, a nearly magical literary experience... It simply does not get much better than this

—— Ekstra Bladet, Denmark

Petterson confirms his reputation as Scandinavia's leading realist writer...the heart-rending contrast between power and powerlessness, silence and speech is anchored in every word in these pages. And in the reader’s soul

—— Kristeligt Dagblad, Denmark

A masterpiece...at least as good as Out Stealing Horses... Intimate, shocking, demanding, raw

—— Morgenbladet, Norway

Norwegian literature's clearest shining star...a masterful novel about friendship, violence and destruction

—— Information, Denmark

A moving, complex short novel that is richer and more satisfying than most books several times its length

—— Daragh Reddin , Metro Herald

The suspense isn’t in the plot but the prose, with its extraordinary looping sentences

—— Blake Morrison , Guardian Weekly

A harrowing account of childhood, of friendship, and of family disruption… Precise, scrupulous and emotionally intense… Peterson is a skilled storyteller… An admirable and honest novel.

—— Eibhear Walshe , Irish Examiner

With an enchanting, poetic language Rachel Joyce writes about the fundamental questions of life and death.

—— 52buecher, Germany

Like Harold Fry, Queenie is delightful and dark. Death, duty and regret shadow nearly every page, but the darkness is not unrelenting; there is humor, and there is light.

—— Minneapolis Star Tribune

This lovely book is full of joy. Much more than the story of a woman’s enduring love for an ordinary, flawed man, it’s an ode to messy, imperfect, glorious, unsung humanity ... Her love song is for us. Thank you, Rachel Joyce.

—— Washington Post

[A] deeply affecting novel…Culminating in a shattering revelation, her tale is funny, sad, hopeful: She’s bound for death, but full of life.

—— People Magazine

A moving, lyrical read about life, love and saying goodbye. this is a companion story to the similarly entrancing The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, but could be read alone.

—— Cathy Rentzenbrink , Prima
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