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A devastating love story. A bewitching twist on history. A blood-drenched hunt for purpose, power, and redemption.

In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears most: the terrible Beast of Gévaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake.

Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel – who takes payment in living hearts – it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.

Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse.

But Gévaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastian’s unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastian’s arcane activities – not to mention his demonic counterpart – have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war.

Debut author Cameron Sullivan tears the heart out of history with this darkly entertaining retelling of the hunt for the Beast of Gévaudan. Lifting the veil on the hidden world behind our own, it reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne d’Arc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution.

Don't just take our word for it...

“The Red Winter is a hell of a debut. An absolute feast of a book: rich, red, sinfully delicious. I’ve rarely been this satisfied–or this hungry for more.”
– Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of Starling House

“A gorgeous tangle of history and fresh-made myth, The Red Winter is my platonic ideal of a debut: the moment I was done, I went looking for Sullivan’s backlog and let out an actual howl of despair upon realizing there was nothing yet. You’ll eat this one up.”
– Cassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth

“Historical horror? Dark fantasy? Queer romance? All of the above!…. A delightful, genre-defying debut.”
– Kirkus Reviews, starred review 🌟

Taste the very first page

The girl was surprisingly beautiful in the moonlight.

“Surprisingly” for two reasons. First: she had a reputation for beauty. In my experience, this would usually mean only that she’d managed to keep all her teeth in the long weeks between puberty and pregnancy. And second: she was two days dead, and I have violated enough graves to know that corpses are not, to common tastes, beautiful.

I believe her name was Cristina. Her ghost sat opposite me on a crude tombstone, watching me work. Now, the ghost was beautiful, but they often are. This spirit girl’s hair was typical of Piedmontese folk, thick and dark and curly, falling just below her shoulders. Her eyes were large and bewitchingly deep with the gravity of the hereafter. Her shade glowed softly, wearing the same white smock I had just cut away from her corpse.

“That was expensive,” muttered the girl, looking at the ruins of the dress.

“I can tell,” I replied. “Aren’t you pleased that it’s not going to rot in the ground?”

Sarmodel, my indwelling demon, had Projected himself in human form to sit beside her, with the very worst intentions. He appeared as a black-haired boy of about ten years, with a long face and an exquisitely aquiline nose, which I assume was how I looked when we were first joined.

“Aren’t you pleased, Sebastian, that you can add to your stock of used cerements?” Sarmodel asked me, smiling. “And wasn’t this worth leaving home for?”

Among many other things, I have need of good cloth in my line of work, and the dress would not be wasted. But Sarmodel’s point was plain; Cristina was a charity case.

“We weren’t doing anything else,” I replied.

March 2026