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By David Scott Hay

How does one choose between personal redemption and the salvation of the world?

GOODREADS #1 HORROR TO READ IN 2026

‘A sobbing bloody primal scream of a book! Every character, from Jesus’s midwife to Mary Magdalene, is tough as nails and achingly, heart-breakingly human amidst the carnage and agony’ - Caitlin Starling

‘The New Testament à la Cormac McCarthy’ – KIRKUS REVIEWS

An instant classic’ –Chris Panatier

‘Filled with grisly visions no amount of bleach will ever rinse out from your eyes’ –Clay McLeod Chapman

‘Provocative and challenging. . . a monstrous miracle with its hands full of blood’– Mariana Enriquez

For fans of Between Two Fires and Angel Down comes a breakout biblical horror novel about a butcher plagued by violent visions of the future who sets out to kill a pre-ministry Jesus.

The Butcher has spent decades trying to atone for his part in King Herod’s Culling, during which he was forced to slay his own son.

Plagued by visions, the Butcher sees holy wars, inquisitions, persecution, and finally a flame deluge that turns the earth to ash and glass. Determined to prevent such an apocalyptic future, he sets out to kill the one child who escaped Herod’s blade: Jesus of Nazareth.

The journey takes a personal turn when he adopts a dead infant and begins to imagine a different miracle: the restoration of his own family. Accompanied by a monstrous one-horned goat, the Butcher murders his way from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to Nazareth, where he finds not the radiant saviour of prophecy but a heavyset, honey-loving man still waiting for his Calling.

When he asks Jesus to resurrect the child, the answer will force both men to confront the terrible cost of faith, forgiveness, and redemption.

A breakout biblical heart-of-darkness tale of fathers and sons, grief, zealotry, faith, and the terrible freedom of choice, The Butcher of Nazareth is a literary horror novel about the violence people commit in the name of belief. 

David Scott Hay is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. Born and raised in OKC, he lost the tip of a finger in a chop-saw incident somewhere in Chicago. He currently lives with his wife and son and dog and chickens and a dozen typewriters in a valley between the ocean, the mountains, and the desert.

Instagram @david.scott.hay.official