We’re thrilled to share the cover of Sheldon Costa’s debut novel, The Great Work—forthcoming November 4, 2025 from Quirk Books.
An alchemist and his young nephew hunt down a legend in this profound and unsettling speculative Western, for fans of Karen Russell and Victor LaValle.
Alone in a frontier town in the brand-new state of Washington, Gentle Montgomery is grieving his best friend. Liam, a self-taught alchemist, was killed when he tried to capture a creature that shouldn’t exist: a giant salamander that drives men mad. When Gentle’s nephew, Kitt, arrives at his doorstep, the two set out together to track the monster down so they can use its blood in an alchemical formula that will bring Liam back to life.
It’s a hard and haunted journey through the Northwestern frontier. The salamander produces surreal nightmares and waking dreams of a blighted, burning future. And Gentle and Kitt soon find themselves pursued by a bloodthirsty hunter, a sadistic judge, and a doomsday cult, all of whom have their own plans for the river monster. Armed with nothing but Liam’s alchemical notebooks, they must not only find the salamander but learn to understand it—and the terrifying visions it causes—before it’s too late.
Dark and compelling, The Great Work is an arcane adventure through the wilderness of friendship and the rotten heart of the early American empire.
Buy the Book
The Great Work
Sheldon Costa is an award-winning fiction writer who has been published in The Georgia Review, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, and others. He holds an MFA from The Ohio State University and lives in rural Missouri with his wife and three cats. This is his debut novel.
