By Matt Spaulding
Release Date: 7/7/2026
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
One thing about Chuck Tingle is that he never fails to surprise and delight me. His fourth mainstream horror novel, Fabulous Bodies, continues his streak of presenting a story and experience unlike anything I have read before.
In this book, we meet Poppy Stringer, a social media influencer with dreams of stardom. She wants nothing more than to be one of the biggest social media stars of her age. But, like many, Poppy finds that becoming a social media star isn’t easy, and it doesn’t pay the bills being an aspiring influencer. And so, she has a much more lucrative, much more bizarre, side hustle: she sells dead bodies on the black market to provide an extravagant life for her young daughter, a life she herself never had as a child.
When Poppy’s musical hero, Eddie Michaels, unexpectedly dies in a car accident, she is shocked to get a call to get his body for a sum that would mean she never has to pick up dead folks again. And it’s this call that gets her involved in a strange, horrifying night of murder and mayhem.
Fabulous Bodies not only continues Tingle’s streak of presenting incredibly original stories, but also filling those stories with insight, heart, and love. His famous pink mask sports the phrase “Love Is Real” and it’s clear Tingle really believes it and wants you to believe it, too.
Tingle is also a wonderful creator of characters. He never fails at making you connect with the protagonists and side characters equally and bringing you on a journey with his main characters. In this novel, he pulls this amazing trick of making the reader root for and care for a black market body dealer. Tingle very much understands the importance of character arc and it’s never been more on display than in Fabulous Bodies, where a character who starts as pretty close to despicable ends up in a place where you’re so happy she’s happy.
Fabulous Bodies is a wild ride almost from the jump. It’s tense, it’s gory, it’s strange, it’s funny, and it’s unique. It’s another fantastic read from one of the most interesting, talented, smart, and inspiring authors of our time.