The Black Bird of Chernobyl

Two-time Lambda Literary Award-winning author Ann McMan takes readers inside the inner workings of the funeral home business as only she can in this remarkable and wholly unforgettable dark romantic comedy that proves life is for the living.

Everything about Lilah Stohler is dark: her clothes, mood, and outlook on life and death. That last part is important because Lilah’s father has just retired and left her in charge of the family funeral home. But Abel Stohler knows his daughter’s comfort level rests “downstairs,” so he hires one Sparkle Lee Sink, to help Lilah manage the living part of the business of death.

Sparkle is everything that Lilah isn’t—an empathetic marketing whiz who is a true people person.

Lilah isn’t happy about this new arrangement. Still, when business starts booming because of Sparkle’s bright personality, delicious baked goods, and knack for funereal commerce, Lilah thinks things might work out. But joy is fleeting in the funeral home business, and Lilah’s world is turned upside down when an unwitting Instagram post featuring one of her moods goes viral—and now, sightings of “The Black Bird of Chernobyl” have become an obsession across the Instaverse.

Lilah knows that Sparkle needs to go, but before she can give her the send-off she deserves, Lilah must first find a way to deal with the inconvenient attraction she’s developed for the nemesis whose unconventional methods are single-handedly transforming the death trade—and quite possibly the Black Bird, herself.

Filled with McMan's crisp humor and quirky pathos, The Black Bird of Chernobyl is a humorous dark Southern existential crisis of a romance.