The Cold Side of Stone
What it's about
Maren Calloway has been going through something. She uses the phrase the way other people use 'the flu' — generic, surrounded by sympathy, requiring no explanation. It covers the way food has stopped tasting, the way her hands stay cold no matter how many layers she puts on, the way she can sit in a chair for what she thinks is an hour and find that two have passed, or none.
Then the pull comes.
It is a slow tightening behind her sternum — not painful, not even unpleasant — that draws her, on a January afternoon, through the iron gates of St. Jude's Cemetery. There, among the headstones of the city's forgotten, Maren discovers she can hear the dead. And the dead have been waiting — some of them for decades — for someone who would listen.
What begins as a haunting becomes an investigation. The spirits Maren encounters are not random. They are connected — victims of a quiet, generational evil that has operated in the city's cemeteries for over fifty years, disguised as mercy, buried under the careful work of men who believed they were performing acts of love.
As Maren follows the pull deeper into the city's hidden history, she must confront a truth about herself that her sister Eden has been keeping warm for her all winter: the truth of what happened on a December evening on Halford Street, and what Maren has been since.
The Cold Side of Stone is a literary thriller about grief, sisterhood, and the quiet labor of the people who hold us together when we cannot hold ourselves. It is about the cold side we show the world and the warm side we keep for the few. It is, in the end, about a woman learning that being gone is not the same as being lost — not when someone is still keeping your warm side warm.
Who it's for
The catalog lists The Cold Side of Stone as Literary Fiction by C. V. Wooster.
Subjects listed on the book page: literary fiction, supernatural, gothic, grief, sisterhood, mystery, cemetery, ghosts, serial killer, literary thriller.
The catalog lists this title as coming soon.
Similar books
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Reading order and age notes
The Cold Side of Stone is not listed as part of a numbered series on this site.
The catalog does not list a separate age rating for this title.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Cold Side of Stone about?
A young woman named Maren Calloway discovers she can communicate with the dead — and gradually realizes she is one of them. Drawn by an internal pull to the city's oldest cemeteries, she uncovers a decades-long chain of disappearances perpetrated by a family of gravediggers who disguised their murders as acts of mercy. It is a literary thriller about grief, sisterhood, and the people who keep us warm when we cannot keep ourselves.
What does the title mean?
The cold side of stone is a piece of real gravediggers' lore. The exposed face of a headstone goes cold in winter; the buried face stays warm from the earth's steady temperature. The metaphor governs the novel: what we show the world (the cold side) versus what we keep for the few who love us (the warm side).
Is The Cold Side of Stone a horror novel?
No. The supernatural elements are treated as matter-of-fact, never sensationalized. The tone is quiet, literary, and deeply emotional — closer to Lincoln in the Bardo or Piranesi than to conventional horror. It is a ghost story in the oldest sense: a story about what the dead need from the living, and what the living owe the dead.
What genre is The Cold Side of Stone?
Literary Fiction with supernatural and gothic elements. Comparable to Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders), Piranesi (Susanna Clarke), and Beloved (Toni Morrison). It is C.V. Wooster's most emotionally devastating work.
When is The Cold Side of Stone coming out?
No release date has been announced yet. Sign up for the reader list at cvwooster.com to be the first to know — and to receive a free advance copy.