Below the Grand Hotel

Cat Scully writes and illustrates scary stories for all ages. She is the author of the upcoming horror novel Below the Grand Hotel with Clash Books and the author-illustrator of YA horror series, Jennifer Strange (2020 with Haverhill House Publishing). As an illustrator, she's best known for her world maps and her first picture book, The Mayor of Halloween is Missing (2021), written by Emily S. Sullivan. When she’s not writing and illustrating books, Cat works in video game development and lives just outside of Salem, MA.

"Suggest this debut to those who like tales of artists making dark deals in pursuit of their craft, like Kat Howard's Roses and Rot (2016), and to fans of strong women kicking demon butt, as in Johnny Compton's Devils Kill Devils (2024)." —Booklist"The story's twists and turns are delicious and emotionally impactful and keep readers guessing as to Mabel's ultimate trajectory as she descends deeper and deeper into the Grand's labyrinthine subterranean levels, making the book a macabre treat from start to finish." —Rue Morgue"Below the Grand Hotel is everything that American Horror Story: Hotel wanted to be and so much more. Oscar Wilde would adore it, Clive Barker likely has the penthouse booked out, and I’d go so far as to say that Shakespeare probably visited once or twice. The imagination on show here is spectacular." —The Ginger Nuts of Horror“Cat Scully’s invited us all to a party you won’t want to miss. Below the Grand Hotel is a bloody labyrinth filled with demons and desperation, sorrow and sacrifice. The real horror in these pages is how often we have to choose between suffering for our own sake, and suffering for the sake of others. Follow the author down into a glamorous hell, where damnation comes in every delicious flavor!” —Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Birds and The House of Last Resort"Cat Scully has created an art deco inferno. Below the Grand Hotel is a gorgeous, sumptuous perdition gilded in blood and excess that would make F. Scott Fitzgerald sell his soul to spend just a night in one of its accursed chambers." —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes"A starry-eyed nightmare, delicious and dark. Cat Scully's Below the Grand Hotel gives us gilded-aged horror at its finest. Do check in, darling. You may not want to leave." —Robert P. Ottone, author of The Vile Thing We Created and the Bram Stoker award-winning novel The Triangle"Cat Scully's latest delivers the opulence of Fitzgerald's roaring twenties drenched in gallons of blood, but it's not all glitz, glamor, and gore. Below the Grand Hotel is an allegorical examination of the artist's plight, torn between craft and survival in a difficult world, with hordes of demons and a biblically-accurate angel. It's the bee's knees." —Todd Keisling, Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author of The Sundowner's Dance and Devil's Creek"Like the vaudevillians who haunt these pages, Cat Scully is herself a multihyphenate entertainer, both a gifted visual artist and agile prose stylist. In Below the Grand Hotel, she puts her fierce imagination on full display, guiding readers through a hell as upsetting as it is beautiful, and wrestling with one big, uncomfortable question: What would you trade, to see your dreams come true?" —Shaun Hamill, author of The Dissonance and A Cosmology of Monsters"Below the Grand Hotel is a stunning achievement, as beautiful and baroque as it is haunting and hellish. Venture into Cat Scully's world, and prepare to be enchanted." —Gwendolyn Kiste, Three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens and The Haunting of Velkwood