An influencer making ends meet by grave robbing takes a special job to steal a rock star's body only to find that the corpse has his own plans in Fabulous Bodies, the overlap in the Venn diagram of zombie horror and Faustian bargains by Chuck Tingle (Lucky Day; Bury Your Gays).
Poppy Stringer is determined to give her daughter, Marlo, everything she lacked as a child. She's building a fantasy as a fashion influencer with a little light queer commentary, but in the meantime she deals in corpses. The bodies don't care what happens to them, and Poppy trusts that by being as ruthless as a shark in both of her jobs, she'll rule her ocean. Then Eddie Michaels, a queer piano-playing rock star in the vein of Elton John, is struck by a car and killed, and Poppy is offered $5 million to steal his body. It's everything she needs to set up her family and career, and it seems suspiciously simple--until Eddie's body wakes up.
Faced with an undead passenger who has mysterious powers of coercion and a predilection for over-the-top violence, Poppy quickly turns her singular powers of focus to keeping herself safe for Marlo's sake. Tingle, also an author of short surrealist erotica, again combines a talent for shocking, visceral descriptions with his belief that "love is real." His sharp satirical eye brings a nuanced perspective to Poppy's influencer career, traditional rock stardom, and the dangers of both. The result is social horror with thrills and heart. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library