Jump Links Chapter One Kylie Lee Baker’s critically acclaimed 2025 COVID-era serial killer ghost story, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng was one of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2025.

Hot on the heels of its success, Baker returns to the genre with a brand-new nightmare: Japanese Gothic, a time-bending, bloodcurdling tale that weaves between two timelines set nearly 150 years apart.

In October 2026, young college student Lee Turner, who cannot remember how or why he killed his roommate, flees to his father’s home in Japan.

In October 1877, a samurai named Sen hides in that same house from imperial soldiers who intend to slaughter her family.

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Image: HarperCollins “After reading The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig, which is such a poignant and captivating horror novel about alternate timelines, I was so enamored with the idea of writing a dual-timeline book," Baker told Polygon.

"I’d also been tinkering with the idea of writing what I called a 'mutual haunting' for a while — a story that starts off like your typical haunted-house novel, but then you realize all the mysterious handprints and misplaced items and creepy shadows are happening in both timelines, and that the two characters are actually haunting each other.” Polygon spoke to Baker about what inspired her to write Japanese Gothic, the research involved in writing about female samurai, and what kind of horror she’d like to write about in the future.

After the interview, check out an excerpt from the first chapter of Japanese Gothic.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

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Polygon: Why 2026 and 1877 in particular? Kylie Lee Baker: I wanted one timeline to take place in the present — that’s Lee’s timeline in 2026 — and the other to take place shortly after the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, which was the final uprising of Japan’s samurai class against the Meiji government.

That left Sen’s family sitting in the ashes of broken dreams, which I think is such a tense place to begin a story ## Editor's Note We'll have to wait and see how this plays out in the coming weeks. Source: [Polygon](https://www.polygon.com/kylie-lee-baker-interview-japanese-gothic-free-excerpt/)