Ilona Bannister – Five

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Ilona Bannister

Five

Released May 5th, 2026 via Crown

Per Spectrum Culture:

Ilona Bannister does a lot of things in Five, keeping a taut balance between them. It’s a mystery novel where the death comes at the end, rather than the beginning. It’s an interrelated short story collection with a strong framing device. In places it’s touching; in others it’s horrifying. The characters are all flawed in fascinating ways; the crowd that demands their protagonists be their morally pure best friends will hate it. There’s a lot to unpack from it, and if you’re the type to undertake such an unpacking with glee, you’ll find a lot to admire in Ilona Bannister’s latest.

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Toronto is a graveyard of dreams and a battlefield for the living. Caught between a power-hungry Mayor in City Hall and a ruthless warlord in the West End, Mark and Olivia must navigate a landscape of blind idiot windows and silent subway tunnels to protect their newborn daughter. In a city where the lights have gone out and the rules have vanished, survival is the only law.

Tommy delivers poison by bike in a dying town
Jason donates to a charity that may not exist
Johannes erases people from memory
Dakota’s trial airs live to a voting public
Steve’s wife is pregnant, and no one else is
Jack blacks out after stargazing, and people vanish
Farsi guides strangers through the ruins of Toronto

Lost Ghosts is a collection of seven dark, twisted horror short stories set in a world quietly falling apart.

High school in the 1980s meant cigarette breaks outside the doors, flirting in the parking lot, and endless afternoons at the mall. For Jody, Andy, and Brenda, the mall is their kingdom, until a stolen silk scarf drags them into something darker than teenage rebellion.

What begins as a petty act of shoplifting spirals into a midnight break-in, where the fluorescent glow of the mall gives way to shadows that don’t behave like shadows at all. In the dead corridors of an empty shopping center, something ancient and hungry stirs, something that moves to the rhythm of the music and won’t stop until it’s fed.

Part nostalgic time capsule, part nightmare descent, Under Cover of the Night is a chilling tale of friendship, temptation, and the horrors that slither just beyond the fluorescent lights.

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