Victor Manibo + Clay McLeod Chapman: The Villa, Once Beloved

Join us for a launch event with Filipino novelist Victor Manibo, discussing his new book The Villa, Once Beloved. Joining Victor in conversation is notable horror writer Clay McLeod Chapman. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

Can’t make the event? Purchase a signed copy of The Villa, Once Beloved here.

ACCESSIBILITY:

Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.

ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at events@strandbooks.com by Nov. 10 to request.

Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.

For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact events@strandbooks.com

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A dark history is unearthed amid crumbling façades in Lambda Literary fellow Victor Manibo’s new gothic tale of family, homecoming, and postcolonial vengeance . . .

Some legacies are best left buried...

Villa Sepulveda is a storied relic of the Philippines’ past: a Spanish colonial manor, its moldering stonework filled with centuries-old heirlooms, nestled in a remote coconut plantation. When their patriarch dies mysteriously, his far-flung family returns to their ancestral home. Filipino-American student Adrian Sepulveda invites his college girlfriend, Sophie, a transracial adoptee who knows little about her own Filipino heritage, to the funeral of a man who was entwined with the history of the country itself.

Sophie soon learns that there is more to the Sepulvedas than a grand tradition of political and entrepreneurial success. Adrian’s relatives clash viciously amid grief, confusion, and questions about the family curse that their matriarch refuses to answer. When a landslide traps them all in the villa, secrets begin to emerge, revealing sins both intimately personal and unthinkably public.

Sifting through fact, folklore, and fiction, Sophie finds herself at the center of a reckoning. Did a mythical demon really kill Adrian’s grandfather? How complicit are the Sepulvedas in the country’s oppressive history? As a series of ill omens befall the villa, Sophie must decide whom to trust—and whom to flee—before the family’s true legacy comes to take its revenge...

Photo credit: Sean Collishaw

Victor Manibo is a Filipino novelist living in New York. A 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, he is the author of the science fiction novels The Sleepless and Escape Velocity, and the crime novel Dead Note. The Villa, Once Beloved is his first horror novel. Aside from fiction, he also spins fantastical tales in his career as a lawyer. He lives in Queens with his husband and their pets. Find him online at victormanibo.com and on most social media platforms @victormanibo.

Clay McLeod Chapman writes novels, comic books, and children's books, as well as for film and TV. He is the author of the horror novels The Remaking, Whisper Down the Lane, Ghost Eaters, and What Kind of Mother. He also co-wrote Quiet Part Loud, a horror podcast produced by Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw for Spotify. Visit him at claymcleodchapman.com.