Crystal Lake Publishing has quietly become the new home for one of horror fiction’s stranger, slower-burning cult properties. The independent press has announced a 20th-anniversary edition of Tim Waggoner‘s Like Death, paired with Like Death 2: Kill Them All a sequel that, until now, existed only as a promise. Both books are set for February 26, 2027, in Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback editions.
Originally published by Leisure Books in 2005, Like Death follows true-crime writer Scott Raymond back to his hometown of Ash Creek, Ohio, where the childhood trauma of his parents’ murder turns out to have left a door open onto something considerably worse than grief. The book built a quiet reputation among readers who like surreal horror, predating the tie-in and Nekropolis novels that made Waggoner’s name more widely known.
Like Death 2: Kill Them All hands the family curse down a generation, to Scott’s son David (now the child of a man infamous as a serial killer) who gets pulled into a lethal competition inside a realm called Undernight while a doppelganger of himself runs loose back home. Waggoner has mentioned finishing the manuscript before; the Crystal Lake deal is the first confirmation it’s actually coming out.
Crystal Lake Publishing will be bringing out the 20th anniversary edition of Like Death and its brand-new sequel, Like Death 2: Kill Them All, in paperback!
Tim Waggoner, via Bluesky
No storefront link is live yet — the Crystal Lake page is an announcement rather than a preorder listing, and the earlier signed Thunderstorm Books hardcovers of both titles were a separate, already-fulfilled collector’s release. Waggoner, a four-time Bram Stoker Award winner and creative writing professor at Sinclair College, has more than sixty novels behind him; expect ordering details as the February date gets closer.
