Books on Our Radar: Adam, Mine. by K. Ancrum

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at eighteen, surrounded by queer writers and thinkers, and her own letters after Percy’s death suggest romantic attachments to women that scholars have been debating ever since. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula with a queerness so clear that scholars have been unpacking it for a century. Oscar Wilde gave us Dorian Gray. Queer writers have always known what the monster is really for.

K. Ancrum’s The Corruption of Hollis Brown put a queer love story inside a ghost possession narrative that draws directly on the Gothic tradition. This Wretched Beauty by Elle Grenier, a trans author, rewrote Dorian Gray as a transfeminine story set in 1867 London and made the horror about what it costs to exist in a body that the world refuses to accept on your terms. Andrew Joseph White’s The Spirit Bares Its Teeth put a trans protagonist inside a Victorian body horror narrative and let the monstrousness be the institution rather than the person.

Queer YA authors are not just writing monsters but are going back to the source texts and making explicit what has always been there. Which brings us to Adam, Mine by K. Ancrum, out September 8th, a book we are excited about this fall. A direct Frankenstein retelling, queer romantic horror, the story of Victor Frankenstein (imagined as a teenager) and the boy he creates, and the emotional bond that forms between them across the most impossible circumstances imaginable. We cannot wait!

Adam, Mine.

by K. Ancrum
Published by: HarperCollins
on September 8, 2026
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Goodreads

From acclaimed author K. Ancrum, on the National Book Award longlist for The Corruption of Hollis Brown, and Lambda Literary Award winner for Icarus, comes a queer romantic horror thriller that is a love letter to Frankenstein about the consequences of our decisions, the legacy of family, and the depths we’ll go to be forgiven.
Victor Frankenstein, a 17-year-old brilliant prodigy, wants his fellow university peers to finally take him seriously. After suffering a public humiliation over his wild academic theories, Victor makes a bet with the most popular student: he swears he will find the secret to human reanimation before graduation. Desperate and unwilling to be humiliated again, Victor does the unspeakable: he kidnaps a young man from a small, neighboring village and destroys his body using untried Alchemy instead of science…
Elias Hilfiker awakens, horrified—his voice is gone, his skin is stitched and scarred, and his community has exiled him. Worse, Victor’s clumsy alchemy has unintentionally created a bond between Elias and his tormentor, forcing them to constantly feel each other’s emotions.
Enraged by the desecration of his life, Elias swears before God and Man that he will seek vengeance on Victor at any cost. Meanwhile, Victor embarks on a journey to reverse the horror he’s unleashed. As they cross the European landscape—hunter and hunted—Victor bows before the weight of his sins while Elias uncovers the secrets of his own power in a world where he was once powerless.