Coming October 2026
Every suburban street holds secrets and ghosts, but Summerland Place holds more than most. The team from The Red Mullet Hair Salon head to Summerland Place to explore the abandoned houses there, on a prepaid, enter at own risk, explore every nook and cranny team building exercise. They are welcomed by the charismatic Milton, who runs the tours through the cul-de-sac he grew up in. They find houses filled with malevolent ghosts and tragic ones, with memories of family trauma and family meals. All come out changed by what they see, and what it triggers in them. Some will be lost in Summertime, a euphoric state of mind. Georgia, owner of the Salon, thinks she is stronger than any of it. She has no past trauma, no secrets; some would say no heart. She didn’t expect to fall in love. Every instinct tells her not to. And yet she is drawn into the disturbing world of Milton and his mother, as she feels the seductive draw of Summertime ever stronger.
PRAISE FOR GOING TO SUMMERTIME
“The prolific Warren is back with a short, eerie tale … at once an ode to the horror genre and a
frighteningly realistic look at the ugly nature of greed.”
—Booklist
“Kaaron Warren is the Virginia Woolf of the weird and horrific. Going to Summertime is her latest success, a short novel brimming with stark terror, heartbreak, and the slippery nature of history and identity. Maybe most of all, it’s about female friendship. Read it, and then read everything else she has written.”
—John Langan, author of The Fisherman
“Displaying all of Warren’s usual fearlessness as a writer, Going to Summertime is another outstanding entry in her canon. An inventive, unexpected exploration of friendship and fear. Precise. Deceptive. Brilliant.”
—Angela “A.G.” Slatter, multi-award-winning author of The Cold House
“You’re never safe with Kaaron Warren—in a cul-de-sac full of shadows, in a brutal dream of a game, in the pages of Going to Summertime—but you follow her all the same: because her voice is irresistible. And this book is an experience you need to have.”
—Kathe Koja, author of The Cipher
“Going to Summertime is totally Kaaron Warren—what did you expect? Morbid and cajoling, sensual and startling. An astonishingly bizarre novella. And a treat for those finally encountering indomitable Warren’s rich and most peculiar stories.”
—Eugen Bacon, Aurealis Magazine
“Family trauma and a secret history of violence. Ghosts as coarse and gristly and broken as their not-quite-living neighbors. Four friends and the game they wished they’d never played. Going to Summertime glitters with abandoned needles and shards of glass—dreamlike, cruel, and seductively perverse. A perfect suburban nightmare.”
—J. Ashley-Smith, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Measure of Sorrow
