Makanda - Jeffery Alvey

In the shadowed ravines of southern Illinois, something ancient has learned how to evolve again.

When mutilated hikers begin turning up in Giant City State Park, crime scene investigator Janice Redfield suspects the truth is far worse than an animal attack. Decades earlier, locals whispered about the Big Muddy Monster-a towering nightmare blamed for a string of brutal deaths in 1973. Now the legend is waking up.

Born from a microscopic parasite older than history, the creature grows smarter and deadlier with every host it consumes-cricket, snake, deer, man-until it becomes a towering apex predator with a hunger for perfection. As blood floods forests, classrooms, and homes, science, obsession, and violence collide.

Makanda is a relentless descent into body horror, biological terror, and vivid brutality-where survival may demand the unthinkable, and mercy comes at the price of sanity.