Kosoko Jackson debuts chilling cover for his adult fiction debut, “The Macabre”

The portrait of Dorian Gray has nothing on the horrific paintings at the heart of The Macabre.

The fantasy-horror novel, hitting shelves Sept. 9, 2025, will mark the adult debut of YA author Kosoko Jackson (I'm So (Not) Over You). The novel follows struggling artist Lewis Dixon, who is shocked when the British Museum shows an interest in his work. In particular, they're intrigued by his painting of a painting — one of 10 paintings his great-grandfather created over a century prior.

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His images are a bit surreal and horrific, and he can't help but feel there's something disturbing lurking under the surface of his work. It all comes to a head when he accepts the museum's invitation and is tasked with exploring whether he has the magic required to both enter and escape his paintings. As it turns out, his art, and the 10 paintings by his grandfather, carry magical abilities and a terrible curse — and it's up to Lewis to track them all down and destroy them.

Entertainment Weekly has your first look at the startling cover image below. Read on for more from our conversation with Jackson.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This is your adult debut. What has it been like transitioning to that new age range and writing toward a different audience?

KOSOKO JACKSON: I’ve always wanted to be an adult author, particularly an adult fantasy author. When I was younger, those were the books that kept me busy, kept me dreaming, and kept stoking my literary fire. When I approached my agent in the spring of 2022 with this idea, I was hesitant about whether it was a "good" idea and worth jumping ship for. We went back and forth (well, I went back and forth on it) until the summer of 2023, when I finally dove into writing it. So far, it's been great. I have a special place in my heart for young adult books, but adult books allow me to explore themes in more depth, push my writing further, and really challenge the reader in ways I haven’t been able to in young adult. Plus, I’ve found that many of the ideas I’ve come up with for books were being bent and contorted to fit into young adult novels. Now, the ideas are flowing like water from a fire hose, and I cannot wait to explore so many of them.

Tell us more about The Macabre and where the core idea came from.

The Macabre had been in my head for a while but started out very differently: What if a person bought a house, there was a cursed painting inside, and they were brought into a team of agents who cleansed these paintings to help hunt them? The idea didn’t really stick or interest me much when I first came up with it, but when I bought a car and was driving back three hours with it and heard "Cassandra" by Florence + The Machine on shuffle, the lyrics spoke to me about a doomed woman. From then on, Cassandra, a character in The Macabre, was born, and I worked backward from that. I also have a love for heist and adventure movies, blending with my childhood love of anime. Somehow, after that, the story of a prophetic painter, who was tasked by the British Museum on this international hunt just…came fully formed.

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Are the paintings real or inspired by real paintings?

Some of the paintings are very loosely inspired by real-life paintings; for example, there is one painting inspired by Edvard Munch's The Scream from the late 1890s. I wanted to make sure to pay homage to some great painters across the world and throughout history and show the power of art and its influence. Mostly, I just wanted to create the type of creepy paintings and vibes that give a chill when you look at them, the type of paintings that you feel might have some sinister origin and undertones, like you might get from Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco de Goya or Old Man's Death by László Mednyánszky.

You've also written in the romance/rom-com space. What propels you to write a love story versus a horror or thriller?

I don’t think they are that far off, actually. I think both have a focus on compelling characters and helping us explain a facet of our reality and our wants. In rom-coms, there is a desire, as a reader and a writer, to prove happiness is worth fighting for and that there is a positive horizon in the future. It helps validate us, especially as a queer Black rom-com writer, and tells the world, “I deserve to be seen and deserve love.” In horror, the themes are similar. Horror helps us confront the darkness of the world, proves we’re not alone, and makes tangible fears that might otherwise feel intangible. You can trace societal issues of the past through the horror content produced in each decade.

For me, horror — be it horror that ends in a win or a cataclysmic loss — helps ground us in the universe. It proves we’re not alone because someone else has the same fears, and it also can help us process how to challenge our fears in real life. Plus, I do love writing gory scenes and pushing myself to create atmospheric horror. If I can make a book that makes someone say, “This scared me like Hereditary or Longlegs did,” I’ll die happy.

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Did you have specific asks for the cover, be it the dripping blood or the Goya-esque painting?

The one thing I’ve learned as an author is to let your team and the artist have free rein. I did provide some guidelines: I wanted to work with the painting motif and make it feel creepy. My editor, David Pomerico, came up with the idea of making the book feel like it was a wall with a painting on it, which is a crucial scene in the first part of the book. I think my exact words were “Make it creepy!” and they came through. I love the cover so much; I cannot stop staring at it.

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