Immortown

After a tragic accident on set (which might or might not have been her fault), 18-year-old indie-film actress Freya Aurore flees from home and finds herself in Immortown. She is not entirely sure how she ended up here, but one thing is certain: This town is. . .unusual. To start with, local buildings have an annoying habit of disappearing right in front of her eyes. Strangers keep attempting to murder her, failing to see how that can be upsetting. Everyone spends an indecent amount of time in this bar called the Drunk Dead (which has some serious customer service problems, if you ask Freya). Among other shady characters, she encounters here: an occasionally deceased waiter; a woman claiming to be dating Freya’s brother, who has been unavailable for such matters—or anything else, really—for a year now; an actual (and bloodthirsty) ghost named Dude; an obsessed fangirl; and a moody young artist, Kai, whose paintings tend to come true—which would be wonderful and not at all creepy, were he not such a vile and selfish manipulator.

In the rare moments when she is not busy trying to survive, Freya is looking for a way to escape from this place, but they say once you’re trapped here, you can never leave Immortown—a town that smells like ashes, where fiery October leaves are forever falling, thick as snow, where art comes to life, and staying alive is an art in itself; where music matters and death doesn’t.

This is an atmospheric and melancholy novel sprinkled with dark humor and harboring an entire ocean inside.