Something of a Calling

by Zoje Stage · 2026

From the brilliant Zoje Stage, Bram Stoker Award finalist and author of Baby Teeth, Something of a Calling is an unsettling look at a woman--and a world--on the brink of change. This gorgeous hardcover edition includes sprayed edges. Detective Andy Cooper is about to retire. She isn't sure what's next ... perhaps traveling in the RV she has yet to buy, with a dog she doesn't currently own. Perhaps gardening near the ever-shrinking patch of woods behind her house--once the cable company's backhoe is removed. She'll need to do something, if only to distract herself from how empty her life has become. After the murder of her young daughter by a drunk driver. After the divorce. After the realization that all she has is her job and that she's about to lose that, too. Everything changes when bodies begin to turn up. Murdered, but how? Not by knife, gun, or any obvious weapon. Instead: teethmarks. Chunks missing. Like they'd been chewed on. And not by humans. As she's struggling to solve her final case, an unexpected new friendship seems like just what Andy needs. Where she is detached from life, Fiona embraces it. Where she is a homebody, Fiona roams. Yet the women are drawn together by a shared love of nature and wildlife. Until Andy learns the dark truth behind Fiona's smile. A secret that threatens to unravel the world as she knows it.