A young Chinese American woman battles deadly and disturbing phenomena in New York City at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, YA author Kylie Lee Baker's powerful first horror novel for adults.
In April 2020, a white man pushes Cora Zeng's ethereal, self-centered half sister, Delilah, in front of a subway train after calling her "bat eater." Cora, who sees herself as a nonperson, takes a job as a crime-scene cleaner to cover her rent. Lately, she and her coworkers are exclusively cleaning up after the murders of Asian American women. Cora has started finding bat carcasses at the scenes. Unsettling occurrences happen at her apartment, such as food going missing from the fridge. She worries that her mental health issues may be causing her to misremember or hallucinate, but the bite marks in her coffee table are less easily explained. Her co-worker Yifei warns her about hungry ghosts, spirits who don't receive the proper reverence. Cora must find out if the rising body count is related to Delilah's death and finally step out of her sister's shadow.
The author's earlier work in young adult fiction shows in the beautifully intimate immediacy of Cora's inner life. Baker (The Blood Orchid) is unafraid to go for the gore but also mines a core of sorrow that makes the story's horrifying aspects more impactful. "Fear is born in the after, when the world peels back its skin," Cora ruminates. This atmospheric, chilling novel reckons brilliantly with anxiety, racism, and grief in the pandemic era. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads