We’re thrilled to share the cover of Victor Manibo’s The Villa, Once Beloved, a gothic tale of family, homecoming, and postcolonial vengeance—available on November 25, 2025 from Erewhon Books.
Some legacies are best left buried…
Villa Sepulveda is a storied relic of the Philippines’ past: a Spanish colonial manor, its moldering stonework filled with centuries-old heirlooms, nestled in a remote coconut plantation. When their patriarch dies mysteriously, his far-flung family returns to their ancestral home. Filipino-American student Adrian Sepulveda invites his college girlfriend, Sophie, a transracial adoptee who knows little about her own Filipino heritage, to the funeral of a man who was entwined with the history of the country itself.
Sophie soon learns that there is more to the Sepulvedas than a grand tradition of political and entrepreneurial success. Adrian’s relatives clash viciously amid grief, confusion, and questions about the family curse that their matriarch refuses to answer. When a landslide traps them all in the villa, secrets begin to emerge, revealing sins both intimately personal and unthinkably public.
Sifting through fact, folklore, and fiction, Sophie finds herself at the center of a reckoning. Did a mythical demon really kill Adrian’s grandfather? How complicit are the Sepulvedas in the country’s oppressive history? As a series of ill omens befall the villa, Sophie must decide whom to trust—and whom to flee—before the family’s true legacy comes to take its revenge…
Buy the Book
The Villa, Once Beloved
Victor Manibo is a Filipino novelist living in New York. A 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, he is the author of the science fiction novels The Sleepless and Escape Velocity. His first crime novel, Dead Note, is available from Bonnier Books. His first horror novel, The Villa, Once Beloved, comes out November 2025 from Erewhon Books. Find him online at his website and on most social media platforms @victormanibo.
