‘Secret Lives Of The Dead’ Exclusive Excerpt: ‘The Silence’ Author Pens Dark New Folk Horror
Coming soon from Titan Books is Secret Lives of the Dead by Tim Lebbon, author of The Silence. His latest novel is a dark folk horror tale of a deadly family curse, crime, and murder. Dread Central is excited to exclusively reveal the cover for the upcoming novel, as well as an excerpt to give you a taste of Lebbon’s new piece of horror.
Read the full synopsis for Secret Lives of the Dead below:
When Jodi, BB, and Matt decide to burgle a derelict country home as a thrilling dare, they become embroiled in a twisted legacy of supernatural terror. There are rumors of a bizarre curse hanging over the hoard of antiques and jewelery within the house. And unbeknownst to the others, one member of the trio has darker motives for breaking into the property.
Lem is a brutal man obsessed with a gruesome family legend. He is determined to right the wrongs of the past and lift the curse placed on his bloodline. By completing the work of his father and bringing a bizarre selection of scattered relics back together, he hopes to be free of the malign influence that has hounded every generation of his family for two centuries.
Across a single day a deadly pursuit will culminate on the desolate, storm-swept Crow Island, and those involved are given cause to wonder… can believing in a curse deeply enough bring its own bad luck?
Now check out the novel’s cover:
Tim Lebbon is the New York Times bestselling author of Eden, Coldbrook, The Silence, and the Relics trilogy. He has also written many successful movie novelizations and tie-ins for Alien and Firefly. Lebbon has won a World Fantasy Award, four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Shocker, a Tombstone and been a finalist for the International Horror Guild and World Fantasy Awards. The Silence is now a Netflix movie starring Stanley Tucci and Kiernan Shipka.
Titan Books will release Secret Lives of the Dead on August 26, 2025.
Read an exclusive excerpt from the upcoming novel, where we get a glimpse at the treasures discovered in the creepy house on the hill:
BB never believed that they’d find anything of worth in that old house on top of the hill. It had been empty for so long that surely anything valuable would have been stripped away, taken by the owners or stolen by prospectors like themselves long before now? Jodi’s certainty that there was something there had kept him intrigued, but for him this was just a lark. An adventure. This was him and Matt completing the childhood plans they’d made to raid and explore the place, and even if they found nothing, that was treasure enough for him.
Staring down at the box Matt had just forced open, BB began to wish they really had come here years ago.
“Is that costume jewellery?” he asked.
“Mate.” Matt picked up a ring and held it up before BB’s torch. The gold was pale and tarnished, but the rock glimmered, swallowing light and seemingly reflecting it even brighter. “This stone’s as big as a blueberry.”
“But it’s fake, right?” BB asked this of Jodi, not Matt. She was watching them, eyes wide, grasping the old stick he’d found as if that was the real precious.
“Dunno.”
BB took the ring from Matt and held it up, shining his torch onto it, into it. It was dazzling. When Jodi held out her hand he dropped it into her palm.
“Shouldn’t you be on one knee?” Matt asked, and the two men laughed. It was vaguely uncomfortable, but BB shrugged it off. They’d never discussed anything so final and binding. He glanced sidelong at Jodi but she was looking at the stick thing in her other hand again. The possible-diamond ring lay forgotten in her palm.
“If this is all real…” Matt said, laying the wooden container on top of a pile of boxes. He pulled out a chain weighted with a locket, some earrings, several bracelets, a handful of brooches, placing them all on the box’s open lid.
“Think there’s more?” BB asked. “Where’d you find it?”
Matt nodded to his right where a heavy cardboard box lay open against the wall. Old books were stacked around it. “Buried in there, under a load of books.”
“Buried. Right. Hidden – so there might be more. Jodi?”
“Probably more,” she said, and he could see that she made an effort to tear her gaze away from the wooden thing. Her smile was false, forced.
“What is that thing?” he asked, and as he reached for the object she took a small step back, held it down against her thigh. It was an involuntary movement, and her smile grew wider, more uncertain.
“Just like something my dad used to collect,” she said. “Surprised me to see one here, that’s all. Worthless but, you know, memories.”
Memories. She’d mentioned her father a few times, but even so BB knew hardly anything about him. He’d been killed in a car crash when she was a teenager, and he guessed that was why she was never very keen to discuss him, and he’d never been pushy. In her own time, he’d thought, but as time went by and little more was said he’d let it go. In her own time might mean never, and that was fine. Now, this was a strange place to start talking about her dead dad.
“So what’s it doing here?” BB asked.
“Lots of these old places had weird carvings like this.” It was a lie, BB was sure. But that didn’t matter. There was gold and diamonds here, probably other stuff buried deeper. He’d have time later to ask Jodi why she was being weird.
“Well let’s keep it together with everything else and we’ll carry it all out.” He didn’t reach for the carving, but he nodded down at the jewellery-strewn box.
Jodi tucked the carved wooden length into the deep thigh pocket of her running leggings and moved to another pile of boxes. Its end protruded from the pocket, clinging close to her leg. Discussion closed, BB thought, but when he looked at the valuables they’d found he let it slip from his mind. Jodi was private and secretive and sometimes pretty weird about her past, and that had never bothered him. He loved her for what she was now, not what she’d been, seen and done before they knew each other.
He could ask her later.
“Let’s get digging,” he said to Matt, and his mate’s wide open expression made him laugh.
“What?” Matt asked.
“Your face!”
“I just never expected… You know.”
“So it’s an adventure and a payoff,” BB said. “Bonus, right?”
“If we can find anyone to buy all this, yeah,” Matt said.
“Let’s worry about that later,” BB said. He kneeled down by where Matt had found the wooden jewellery box, put the torch in his mouth and started rooting around some more. He brought out more books and piled them on the floor, glancing at the titles and covers as he did so. They were in pretty good condition, and he wondered at who’d put them down here, out of sight and mind for so long. His mother had brought him up to love books, and he always had a couple on the go. He liked libraries in a house because, as his mother had said, it made a place feel warm and gave it character. He wondered about who had read these books, what they’d been like, and how the books had ended up boxed away in the dark for so long. There was nothing modern here. Maybe they were a forgotten memory of the murder or suicide victims.
Then who owned the jewellery? He paused at that thought, listening to Jodi and Matt rooting around elsewhere in the cellar. An odd feeling came over him, a coolness, a chill. He’d held the ring, and maybe the last finger it had been on was a dead one. He snorted softly, but couldn’t shake the idea. This place feels weird, he thought, but he wasn’t sure whether it had felt weird before his thoughts of jewellery on murderous or murdered hands, or after.
“We should go soon,” Jodi said.
“We’ve only been down here half an hour!” Matt said.
“And we’ve found plenty. And we can always come back. But time’s ticking, it’s almost eight and the roads will be getting busier. We don’t want your van being seen leaving here.”
“Right,” Matt said. “Yeah. That would be uncool.”
“Stick to the plan, man!” BB said, and he felt a rush of relief that they were leaving. The darkness and mustiness were getting to him. That, and maybe the idea that they were stealing a dead person’s jewellery.
Matt gathered the valuables back into the wooden box and closed the lid, and as he snapped the catch shut something rang out.
“What’s that?” BB looked around, flicking his torch up to the basement ceiling, wondering if one of them had set an old chime moving.
Matt brought out his phone and opened the screen. In its sudden glow BB saw his face drop.
“What?” Jodi asked.
“I set a movement alarm in the van connected to the dashcam,” he said. “There’s a truck.” He held his phone out to show them both the view of Morgan Manor’s gravel driveway in front of the house.
The truck was just rolling to a stop ten metres in front of Matt’s van. It sat there unmoving, doors closed, tinted windows revealing nothing. It was a big Ford, two rows of seats in the cab, wide open bed in the back, a roll bar. It was the sort of vehicle often bought by rich people with no real need of a truck other than to drive their kids to school, but BB could see that this one was functional. Its body was bumped in several places, dirt splashed up the sides, and a short stepladder was tied against the cab roof.
“So who the hell is that?” Matt asked.
“Someone come to clean the windows?” BB said.
Jodi said nothing, but she stared intently at the screen.
“Why aren’t they getting out?” Matt asked. “What are they doing?”
“Jodi?” BB asked, because he could sense her tension, hear it in her shallow breathing. She seemed not to hear. “Jodi!” He nudged her.
“Bad luck,” she said. “That’s all. We’ll just have to—”
“Door’s opening,” Matt said. It was difficult to make out detail on the small screen, but BB saw the driver’s door swing open and a tall man step out. He was dressed in dark clothing and wore a beanie over an unruly mass of wild grey hair. His face was heavily bearded.
He aimed a phone at Matt’s van.
“Oh, that’s just fucking—”
“We need to go,” Jodi said.
“But he’s clocked my van! Maybe we should go up there and—”
“We need to get away from here,” Jodi said. “Matt, get that box. BB, hold this.” She handed him her backpack and started tugging at the zip to open it.
“What’s happening, Jodi?” BB asked, because the truth hit home all at once. They were here because of her, she’d found something that wasn’t treasure to anyone else but her, she’d been on edge the whole time, and now she was scared.
No, more than that. She was terrified.
She pulled something from her pack, and BB almost laughed with the ridiculousness of what was happening.
“I’m sorry,” she said, flustered and jittery. “I’m sorry, both of you – I fucked up and got it all wrong, but we have to go now!”
“You’re holding a gun,” Matt said.
“Now!”
“Why?” BB asked. “Who is that?”
“His name’s Lem Baxter. He’s the bastard who murdered my father.”
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