Twins, a stranger and some very old mischief.
On a quiet morning, Francisca awakes to a rare good day. She skips work, admires the squabbling sparrows on her tiny terrace in Mexico City, and senses a joy so refreshing it feels dangerous. But when there’s a knock on her door, announcing an odd stranger at her apartment, Francisca, frightened and fascinated, acts on a whim, shattering her peaceful day and predictable life. She can think of only one person to help her with this unexpected, maybe hostile visitor – her estranged twin brother, Pablo.
As Pablo arrives, the day spirals from an awkward reunion into a claustrophobic, feverish confrontation where the twins must reckon with a past they thought they had outrun. Over the course of this peculiar day, Francisca and Pablo realise this man brings devastating questions and a reckoning twenty years in the making.
With Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s trademark blend of strangeness, darkness, humour, and tenderness, IMPS! explores themes of imagination, loss, brokenness, and the quest for the extraordinary in everyday life.
Let them in.
Imps!
The first edition hardback, published 4 March 2027.
The Imps! Bundle
The first edition hardback, a tote bag, two bookmarks, a set of badges and a signed A5 print of an original illustration by Gerardo. Available only while pre-orders are open.
From the author of Monstrilio, now come the Imps!
Gerardo Sámano Córdova returns with another bizarre, macabre, humorous and tender novel that will leave readers unsettled yet moved.
‘A beastly and brutal return to Mexico City from the author of Monstrilio, featuring another cast of dangerous, lovable rascals.’
Polly, Bookbar
Gerardo Sámano Córdova
Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City living in Brooklyn. He is the author of MONSTRILIO. His stories have appeared in Apartmento Magazine, Catapult, The Common, Passages North, Chicago Quarterly Review, and others. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan and is the current Writer in Residence at Fordham University. Gerardo has also been known to draw little creatures. IMPS! is his second novel.
What Booksellers
Are Saying
Early readers from bookshops across the UK.
‘Reading Imps! is a visceral, bodily experience. Like being punched in the face... but in a good way.’
Martha, Waterstones Trafford Centre
‘Imps! is beautiful, tragic, bold and brilliant.’
Imps! is beautiful, tragic, bold and brilliant. A novel that holds the intricacies of family connection under a microscope. Part mystery, all horror, this novel is a glorious commentary on the power of belief, the complexity of pain, and how we can live our lives cloaked in the warmth of routine whilst wishing for absolutely anything else. Much like he did in Monstrilio, Gerardo Sámano Córdova deploys a signature quiet queerness into his characters that I hope continues into all his future work. Francisca and Pablo are as sweet as they are disturbed - may a bond like theirs find me. Or maybe not.
‘A love letter to the outcasts and the dreamers, Imps is a novel for the weird kids who grew up to be weird adults.’
Gerardo Sámano Córdova crafts a beautiful chaos in this familial folktale exploring the twin connection.
Francisca and Pablo are estranged, the consequence of an incident they participated in twenty years ago which severed their previously close relationship. Now, at thirty-five, they live separately in lonely, empty apartments wanting to and then resisting contacting each other. Until now, when they are forced to confront the past.
Imps starts off almost like a situational comedy, with Francisca opening her front door to a stranger and reflexively punching him unconscious, but the novel is onion-like in its layers and as mischievous as its title implies.
Largely confined to one room, it almost feels like a play at times, as the twins question the intentions of this mysterious guest like they were poking a frog found in the forest. As we relive their memories of growing up in their small town, there's a deliciously taught line of tension and unpredictability running through the book.
The weird, idiosyncratic dynamics reminded me of Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. As children they are animalike and unconstrained by social norms, with all the joyful optimism emboidied by siblings at play. Francisca especially retreats into a magical realist world to cope with their mother's illness, desperately to believe she and her brother have the powers to cure their mother through ritual. It's a tender portrait of how trauma can affect a family, and whether a siblings innate bond is strong enough to survive it.
It's a short read at just over two hundred pages, but one that will linger with you after you're gone. As with Monstrillio, Córdova writes relationship dynamics so well, evading any temptation to make his characters one-note and retaining a tenderness that made his first novel such a stand out.
A love letter to the outcasts and the dreamers, Imps is a novel for the weird kids who grew up to be weird adults.
‘A force of nature and all things unnatural, this book is truly unpredictable in the way that only living, breathing things tend to be. It is beautifully written, laugh-out-loud funny and scarily tender for a story at times so dark. It bursts with the slow magic of blind faith in those that we love, even in the most ridiculous and life-threatening of circumstances. Imps! belongs on the bedside table of every chaotic and/or evil queer bookworm there ever was.’
‘Best inhaled in one sitting, this slapstick, snack-sized novel keeps pulling the strings and the punches, leaving you breathless and craving more.’
Stupidly good. A story spun like a fairy tale, bursting at the seams with the weird and the wonderful, and with a tender and complicated sibling relationship woven in at its heart. Best inhaled in one sitting, this slapstick, snack-sized novel keeps pulling the strings and the punches, leaving you breathless and craving more.
‘Gerardo manages to make the mundane feel magical and the gruesome beautiful. He is a true master at work.’
Gerardo effortlessly weaves magic through his words while also exploring the tenuous nature of siblings and their relationships. A dark and often times humorous tale in taking place over a single evening as a stranger re-enters the twin's life was such an effective narrative tool that made me what to read all the more and made reading this novella in a single sitting easy.
While some elements are fantastical and feel otherworldly but anyone with a sibling will be able to recognise a piece of themselves within this story. As a twin myself I identified strongly with the bond Francisca and Pablo share, the feeling that you share your own little world wholly with this one person forever and you continue to feel that way regardless of distance and time. I found myself noting quotes down to share with my twin, some lines were truly breathtaking in there beautiful while also managing to be brutal in some way.
Gerardo manages to make the mundane feel magical and the gruesome beautiful. He is a true master at work.
‘A visceral and devilishly twisted tale. Imps! reads like a nightmare knocking on the door of reality. Córdova writes with a masterful blend of simmering disquiet and dynamic horror, slipping beautifully between magical possibilities and brutal truths.’
A visceral and devilishly twisted tale. Imps! reads like a nightmare knocking on the door of reality. It is at once a tender exploration of the bonds that make and break us, and an examination of our most feral impulses driven by the desire for an extraordinary life. Córdova writes with a masterful blend of simmering disquiet and dynamic horror, slipping beautifully between magical possibilities and brutal truths. This is a story that fights numbness, dullness, and conformity, seeking the greatest depths of feeling at whatever cost, for the transformative power they contain.
‘Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s horror cuts deep into the flesh of familial relationships, beautifully laying bare the blood and gore within. Imps! is sensual, intimate and visceral - a dreamlike fairytale that sparkles with wonder, possibility and unrestrained imagination. I devoured Imps! and I’m desperate for more.’
‘Depicting a life authentically lived as the ultimate shenanigan, Imps! suggests that all we truly desire is the perfect partner in crime with whom to share it.’
Much like the mercurial beings at the heart of this novel, Imps! is a tale of playfulness and joy as well as dark mischief.
Imps! is also a cautionary fable about the narratives we tell ourselves as we attempt to outsmart the pain that makes us human. Through his creation of estranged twins Francisca and Pablo, Gerardo Sámano Córdova asks us: is there any pain greater than the absence of true connection?
Depicting a life authentically lived as the ultimate shenanigan, Imps! suggests that all we truly desire is the perfect partner in crime with whom to share it.
‘What a joy it was to read this book! The prose is as mischievous as its characters.’
What a joy it was to read this book! The prose is as mischievous as its characters, slipping in such wonderful lines I had to stop and read them out loud. The violence is pushed against the tenderness of grief, the fear of mundanity in adulthood stark against the flashbacks to a childhood soaked in rituals and oddities. This was, for me, a story about intimacy and the strangeness of it, and how we all need it.
‘Imps! is a clawing exploration of familial ties and belonging. Stunningly written and beautifully delivered, it’s safe to say that Imps! will stick in my memory for a long while.’
Imps! is a clawing exploration of familial ties and belonging, following twins Francisca and Pablo - bonded together, but after years apart they no longer know how to relate to each other. Filled with a tender kind of violence, reading this felt like a fever dream. More than a horror, this book showcases how such insular relationships can develop their own bizarre world where nothing seems impossible. Stunningly written and beautifully delivered, it’s safe to say that Imps! will stick in my memory for a long while.
On a side note - as a bookseller living in Lincoln there was something joyous about the brief mention of our beautiful cathedral and our own ties to the imp. I know so many of my horror-loving customers will eat this up!
‘An explosive novel from the start. The fraught relationship between two siblings is explored beautifully. Tense, deeply reflective and highly chaotic.’
Imps! was an explosive novel from the start, I could feel the tension, anxiety and restlessness of Francisca as she started her day.
The fraught relationship between two siblings is explored beautifully, the attempts at reconciliation as adults and how sometimes it feels safer to avoid confronting and never find out each other's true feelings.
It explored the violent turmoil that can lie beneath the most placid of lives, the ache and fear of connection and how our childhoods can impact our lives in the most unexpected ways. Imps! was tense, deeply reflective and highly chaotic.
‘If a novel had the capacity to maniacally laugh, it would be Imps!’
A beastly and brutal return to Mexico City from the author of Monstrilio, featuring another cast of dangerous, lovable rascals. If a novel had the capacity to maniacally laugh, it would be Imps!
‘A well-paced, swift read full of satisfying revelations. Beneath the ritualistic violence is a twisted nostalgia for the innocence of childhood magic and the belief that you can be anything you dream of.’
DIAVOLA by Jennifer Marie Thorne, FEVER DREAM by Samanta Schweblin, contemporary literary horror, weird fiction fanatics, and novels that are inventive and emotionally resonant.
- Published
- 4 March 2027
- Format
- Hardback
- Extent
- 240pp
- ISBN
- 9781917792929
- Price
- £18.99