Selected as One of The New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of 2025
A Barack Obama Summer Read
A Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Toronto Star, and Publishers Weekly Best of the Year
Kirkus Reviews Best Historical Fiction
The New York Times bestseller and “horror masterpiece” (NPR) from Stephen Graham Jones—the master of modern horror—is a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.
“Jones has written his Interview with the Indigenous Vampire. A landmark of horror and historical fiction alike, perhaps the closest thing we have to horror’s Moby-Dick.” —Vulture
“Inventive and spine-tingling…a master class in voice. Queasy, uneasy, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter plays with the interplay between religion and historical guilt, identity and appetite.” —The Washington Post
A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
About the Author
Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and I Was a Teenage Slasher. He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and a recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the Alex Award from American Library Association. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Praise For…
Praise for The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
"For me and vampires, there is Stoker, there is Rice, and now there is Jones. It's harrowing, agonizing, nuanced, and downright philosophical. Very likely Jones's masterpiece." —Daniel Kraus, New York Times bestselling author of Whalefall
"Stephen Graham Jones tears into the flesh of vampire lore, transforming it into something raw and feral. Jones crafts a stark, unnervingly poetic narrative. This is vampire horror reimagined in the sharp glare of a history America cannot escape." —Shane Hawk, co-editor of Never Whistle At Night
“Stephen Graham Jones has lit a slow-burning candle that grows into a forest fire, illuminating the life of a Pikuni vampire and everyone he has touched, the pain of being a victim and perpetrator of violent history, and how memory serves to keep us who we are despite it all. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is beautiful, terrifying, sad, funny, and grotesque — everything I want in a novel.” —Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree
“A master at blending horror, suspense, and culturally rich stories that are as thought-provoking as they are spine-tingling. Jones’s singular voice and exploration of identity, of trauma and survival, make every page pulse with kinetic urgency.” —David Robertson, author of The Theory of Crows
*"A riveting story of heartbreak, death, and revenge, this remarkable work of American fiction, a thought-provoking tale filled with existential terror, unease, and a high body count, transforms, in Jones’ deft hands, from the unapologetic horror novel it most certainly is into a critique of the entire idea of the United States—a critique that, despite the horrors, both real and supernatural, is forcefully infused with both heart and hope." —Booklist, starred review
*"It’s as much an autopsy of institutionalized treachery as a demonization of its tragic and terrifying 'villain.' A weirdly satisfying and bloody reckoning with some of America’s most shameful history." —Kirkus, starred review
*"A remarkably well-wrought work of historical horror that will captivate Jones’s fans and newcomers alike." —Publisher's Weekly, starred review
*"While this is a unique vampire story, it is also grief horror, portraying the mourning of a land and a people, inscribing profound sorrow for what was and what can never be again." —Library Journal, starred review
"“(A) gruesome joyride of a novel.” —The New York Times
"The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is Stephen Graham Jones' horror masterpiece. The prose is gorgeous and the plot is complex. The author of The Only Good Indians returns again with a spellbinding yarn about one of the bloodiest, most significant parts of the nation's history.” —NPR
"Inventive and spine-tingling, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is the best book I’ve read in ages. It’s a master class in voice... Queasy, uneasy, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter plays with the interplay between religion and historical guilt, identity and appetite." —The Washington Post
"Jones has written his Interview With the Indigenous Vampire...A landmark of horror and historical fiction alike, perhaps the closest thing we have to horror’s Moby-Dick." —Vulture
"[B]rutal and complex, thoughtful and visceral, stylistically daring and truly horrifying." —Toronto Star
