Bat Eater: The Sunday Times bestselling WINNER of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel

· Hachette UK
26 reviews
Ebook
336
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

WINNER OF THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL 2025

🦇 'Haunted, absurd, terrifying, ridiculous' GRADY HENDRIX 🦇
🦇 'Essential reading from a new voice in horror' BOOKLIST 🦇
🦇 'Gory' PAUL TREMBLAY 🦇
🦇 'Swallows you whole and leaves no crumbs' ALICE SLATER 🦇
🦇 'One of the most exciting and unique books I've read in years' ERIC LAROCCA 🦇

Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner. But the bloody messes don't bother her, not when she's already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister being pushed in front of a train.

The killer was never caught, and Cora is still haunted by his last words: bat eater.

These days, nobody can reach Cora: not her aunt who wants her to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, not her weird colleagues, and especially not the slack-jawed shadow lurking around her doorframe.

After a series of unexplained killings in Chinatown, Cora believes that someone might be targeting East Asian women, and something might be targeting Cora herself.

Soon, she will learn . . . you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.

🦇 'A profound reminder of the true horrors that lurk in the world' TORI BOVALINO 🦇
🦇 'A serial killer mystery and a heartbreaking portrayal of grief' KIRSTY LOGAN 🦇
🦇 'This book dug its claws into me and would not let go' LING LING HUANG 🦇
🦇 'Body horror and female rage fiction combine in a powerful novel that will leave you quaking' ALMA KATSU 🦇
🦇 'A poignant, searing portrait of the hostility and violence that plagued pandemic-era NYC' VERONICA G. HENRY 🦇

BAT EATER WAS A NUMBER 4 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WEEK ENDING 09/02/2025

WINNER OF THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL 2025 🦇 'Haunted, absurd, terrifying, ridiculous' GRADY HENDRIX 🦇 🦇 'Essential reading from a new voice in horror' BOOKLIST 🦇 🦇 'Gory' PAUL TREMBLAY 🦇 🦇 'Swallows you whole and leaves no crumbs' ALICE SLATER 🦇 🦇 'One of the most exciti...

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Ratings and reviews

26 reviews
Caroline Skulstad (Caroline Carnivorous)
January 17, 2026
A horror book about racism, covid and other things that are both real and not. It definitely doesn't shy away from disgusting details, from spiders to germs to actual gore. If this was a movie, I wouldn't dare watch it.
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Peter Fountain
January 11, 2026
not interested anymore. boring and long winded. slow plot.
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Yash Date
February 1, 2026
The story is great, not scary enough and the ending could have been better
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About the author

Kylie Lee Baker is the Sunday Times bestselling author of adult horror novels Bat Eater and Japanese Gothic, and YA novels The Keeper of Night duology and The Scarlet Alchemist duology. She grew up in Boston, but lived in Atlanta, Salamanca and Seoul before returning to Massachusetts. Her work is informed by her heritage (Chinese, Japanese and Irish) as well as her experiences living abroad as both a student and teacher. She has a BA in Creative Writing and Spanish from Emory University and an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons University. In her free time, she plays the cello, watches horror movies and bakes too many cookies.

Kylie Lee Baker is the Sunday Times bestselling author of adult horror novels Bat Eater and Japanese Gothic, and YA novels The Keeper of Night duology and The Scarlet Alchemist duology. She grew up in Boston, but lived in Atlanta, Salamanca and Seoul before returning to Massachusetts. Her work is...

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