Odessa

“Odessa is a triumph. Gabrielle Sher has given us, at once, a classic monster tale, a heartbreakingly relevant historical drama, a pulse-poundingly contemporary descent into horror, a timeless parable about the porous boundaries between atrocity and self-defense, and above all, a powerful reclamation of agency. Count me in for whatever Sher writes next.”—Nat Cassidy, author of When the Wolf Comes Home

“Odessa is wonderfully strange, marvelously frightening, and authentically moving. Gabrielle Sher’s powerful tale of terrible wrong and terrifying consequences manages both to surprise and hit all the right chilling notes.”—Laird Hunt, author of the National Book Award nominated Zorrie

“A bold investigation of the costs of violence and complex aftermath of possessive grief. Gabrielle Sher stitches together myth and legend across traditions and time in startling, memorable, and moving ways.” —Elizabeth Graver, author of Kantika

"Odessa is a breathtaking debut novel. Sher's prose is quietly devastating and so beautiful that, like Yetta, I found myself split in half by the aching depths of a family's grief and their struggle to reconcile with loss.”—Monika Kim, author of The Eyes Are the Best Part

“I did not have ‘lush Jewish gothic horror novel’ on my 2026 bingo card, and now I can’t imagine my life without it. Odessa is resplendent and unputdownable.”—Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy

"Sher sets her spellbinding debut in 1905 Odessa, where pogroms have torn apart the Jewish community. . . Sher's straightforward prose packs a punch and she doesn't shy away from the realities of Jewish oppression, balancing the novel's more gruesome elements with the palpable love that bonds the community together. The result is a tender and gutting showstopper."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"With rich use of language and a deep exploration of horrors from both history and Jewish folklore, this story will engage readers who loved other blends of history and folklore, such as The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman, or historical horror with a sharp view to the terror in history, such as The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones."
 —Library Journal, Starred Review

"In a stunning debut focused on grief and identity, Sher delivers an instant modern classic. . . Lyrical and haunting with a nearly palpable ache at its core, Odessa is a quiet horror, laying bare a comparison of real-life evils with supernatural ones. Its fear lingers long after the story is complete."
 —Booklist, Starred Review

“A com­pelling and intro­spec­tive Jew­ish goth­ic novel.”
 —Jewish Book Council