Maiko Moans Colin O'Sullivan | Betimes Books

They came to create music. Instead, they may be unmaking themselves.

Three musicians retreat to a remote house in rural Japan, hoping to channel inspiration into new tracks. But what emerges isn’t music—it’s something far stranger. From the moment they arrive, tensions simmer: the volatile chemistry between Maiko Mikami, the enigmatic lead singer, and her two foreign male bandmates spirals from artistic friction into a dangerous obsession.

Maiko’s voice—sometimes a song, sometimes a moan—cuts through the silence, echoing with fragmented memories and creeping unease. As the days unfold, the air grows heavy with mistrust and desire, the forest presses closer, and the house itself seems to pulse with an ancient, predatory hunger.

Are they losing their minds—or awakening something far darker?

Claustrophobic, sensual, and unrelenting, this literary thriller plunges readers into a fever dream of psychosexual dread and artistic unraveling. With prose as torrential as a typhoon and tension that tightens like a noose, it’s a descent into madness that leads only one way: to a finale as inevitable as it is horrific.

“O’Sullivan deftly dials up the tension in this lyrical thriller until there’s nothing left to do but scream.” —Brian McAuley, author of CURSE OF THE REAPER