Owls Do Not Have Teeth

A compulsive and disturbing literary horror debut about motherhood, marriage and the terrifying consequences of surrendering yourself to the life you thought you wanted.

Seven-year-old Jack hates her. Rowan knows that because he tells her all the time, low and fierce, on the walk home from school, with every kick and scream as she wrestles him through bedtime, in the way he’s quiet and well-behaved for her husband, Ben, but never for her. But painful as it is, Rowan is still a mother, even if she’s a bad one. She is certain of that much, holding onto it when everything else – her memories, her body, her marriage – begins to shred apart.

When a six-foot owl appears in their home and Jack’s baby teeth grow back in, jagged and sharp, Rowan senses something is deeply wrong. Her flesh starts to harden and something claws inside her throat. But she has learned, like all mothers, to endure, to stretch herself thin, to convince herself that things are normal when they are anything but.

Still the outside world recedes and disturbing dreams seep into her waking hours. As Ben’s smile grows wide and pointed, Jack becomes violent, and her younger son, Oliver, looks up at her with knowing, frightened eyes, Rowan is forced to reckon with the truth of the life she chose. She did choose it. Didn’t she?