D. Alexander Ward is the author of the books Pound of Flesh; Beneath Ash and Bone; and When It All Goes Dark: Collected Stories. His forthcoming novel, Nightjar, releases in 2026.

As an anthologist, he edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthology Lost Highways: Dark Fictions From the Road and co-edited several anthologies, including GUTTED: Beautiful Horror Stories; the Shadows Over Main Street series; and Strange Echoes.

He lives near the farm where he grew up in rural Virginia, where his love for the people, passions, and folklore of the South was nurtured. There, he spends his nights writing, collecting, and publishing tales of the dark, strange, and fantastic.

Beneath Ash and Bone by D. Alexander Ward

Selburn, Virginia: A quiet backwater town nestled among the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the days before the Civil War, Sam Lock keeps the peace as the town sheriff, like his father before him.

That peace is shattered during a raging winter storm when a boy goes missing at Evermore, the sprawling estate of the Crownhill family. Racing against time and the elements, Sam must mount a desperate search for the child—but what he finds in the snow and the dark halls of Evermore are madness... and murder.

As Sam searches for truth in a house poisoned by mysteries and haunted by ghosts, he hopes to weather the storm, but the harrowing secrets he uncovers may prove too terrible to bear. Will he escape with his sanity intact or will the dark presence rumored to hold sway over Evermore claim him as another sacrifice?

CURATOR'S NOTE

Nominated as an editor for multiple Bram Stoker Awards, Ward sets this tale of ghosts and murder in pre-Civil War Appalachia, where a sheriff desperately searches for a missing child during a winter storm. – Mike Allen

 

REVIEWS

  • "Engaging, smart, resonant, and downright goddamn terrifying."

    – Ronald Malfi, author of Senseless

  • "Sometimes you read a book and you're like, 'Why isn't this WAY more popular?!' BENEATH ASH & BONE by D. Alexander Ward is that book. Unputdownable."

    – Sadie Hartmann, author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered

  • "D. Alexander Ward is as fine a writer as any in the field today. There's a complete confidence to his voice, teamed with an irrepressible red streak of humor, just visible beneath the horrors."

    – Josh Malerman, author of Incidents Around the House
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Sam stood still, placed the rattle back on the bookshelf and peered into the black.

"Who's there?" he called out, listening intently for some reply or further sign of motion.

Just as he was fixed to move, the mewling returned. Only closer this time, much closer. It was then that he recognized it; not the garbled drone of a perturbed cat at all.

It was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the cry of an infant child.

But that was impossible, he reasoned. He had met the family and the servants, met them all. Lucy and William were the youngest and only Crownhill children.

Unless…

Sam began picking through the attic, listening for the sound to increase in volume.

He moved toward the sound but then it stopped.

After a moment, it started again, though this time it seemed to come from a different direction.

On and on it went, the crying starting up, reaching a crescendo and then abating into silence. Only to begin again.

After some time, and overwrought by his effort, Sam paused and listened.

The sound was coming not from any one direction but from all directions.

For a moment, he wondered if it was truly a sound at all, or if it was something else. A deep-seated anxiety, perhaps, given form but existing only in his mind.

All around him, the sounds. The buzzing in his bones, the crying in his ears.

Lost and confused in the yawning space of the attic, the incessant wailing assaulting him from everywhere and nowhere, his hand grasped something and it rocked to the side but did not fall. Holding the lantern to it, he saw it was a cradle.

He cleared a few objects that stood in his way, their disused remains clattering to the floor, until he stood next to a crib.

Sam craned his neck and peered into it.

A soft cotton blanket was still curled at the bottom of the crib...but there was something else.

Something was moving.

He gasped. There, amidst the rat droppings and the grime of years, was the pale hand and fattened cheek of an infant.

"My God," he breathed, reaching down to pull the blanket away as the child turned its head.

He drew back instantly at the sight of its ragged face, bits of its cheek blackened, a vacant socket where its left eye should have been.

Sam's fingers still held the blanket and as he teetered, the bit of moth-chewed cloth came with him and revealed the infant's body—a hideously deformed mass of tiny gears and spindles with a rusted key buried in its side.