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UNTIL DEATH

Mary Berman

A Novel

In this fresh, darkly funny horror debut, a woman finally agrees to marry the man of her mother's dreams only to discover that wedding planning eats you alive.
If Ophelia Cohen learned one thing from her parents, it's that getting married is a bad idea. But if she's learning anything from her widowed mother's dementia, it's that dying alone is even worse. So when she meets Luke, the handsome heir to a local vineyard, dating him makes sense. And when he asks her to marry him, well. It's what her mother always wanted.

But none of Ophelia's obsessive scrolling on wedding forums can prepare her for the nightmare of planning her own. Why is her mother-in-law so worried about every single detail, right down to the color scheme? Why does it feel like Ophelia is losing track of days, weeks, even months? Why is Luke's family so eager to host the wedding in the vineyard's ancient chapel and why does it feel, sometimes, like the chapel has a heartbeat?

This wedding is supposed to be the thing that saves Ophelia from a lifetime of loneliness. So how is it that the more Ophelia sacrifices, the more alone she is?

Shot through with wicked humor, pitch-black horror, and unexpected romance, Until Death is a deliciously dark send-up of the wedding industrial complex and a mother-daughter story unlike any you've read before.

Mary Berman is a Philadelphia-based writer. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Mississippi, where she was a Graduate Excellence Fellow, and she also holds a BA in writing seminars from Johns Hopkins University. Her short works have been published in Cicada, PseudoPod, Fireside Magazine, and elsewhere. Until Death is her debut novel.
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Published 2026-05-01 by LIttle Brown/Mulholland

Comments

UNTIL DEATH is a surreal and haunting novel about the scariest things in existence: dating, aging mothers, and trying to write a book. The novel resides in the uncanny valley where nothing and no one can be trusted to be real. It was completely unsettling and I couldn't stop reading.

UNTIL DEATH transforms the familiar rituals of marriage into a Gothic nightmare of devotion and decay. With unflinching precision, Berman delivers a haunting, visceral tale where tenderness curdles into terror and every promise carries the weight of a curse.

Mary Berman's hilariously dark portrait of the weird world of wedding planning glistens with humor and horror. An electrifying and affecting debut, UNTIL DEATH serves up terror in the ties that bind.

Snarky and wry, eerie and suffocating, this novel is part devastating examination of daughterhood, part horrifying, outrageous ride into doom. Berman's eye for complicated human relationships is sharp and the scope of her imagination is stunning. UNTIL DEATH grabbed me like a creeping vine and wouldn't let go.

Mary Berman is my favorite kind of writer, one who delivers a great story with great sentences. She's an exciting new voice, one to watch.

Say Yes to the Dress meets Rosemary's Baby in this perfectly disorienting and disarmingly funny novel. Uncanny and incisive, UNTIL DEATH finds horror in intimate and surprising placesfrom the ritualistic banality of wedding planning to the costs of daughterhood. Driven by a voice that is witty, dark, and fully in command, Until Death is an assured and striking debut from Mary Berman.

Completely unique, deeply unnerving, and deviously funny. Mary Berman understands that blending horror and comedy isn't like mixing oil with vinegar; it's like drowning fruit in wine. I've never read a debut quite so assured of its own strangeness as UNTIL DEATH and I'm not sure I will again.

Emotionally honest and brutally funny, UNTIL DEATH explores the contradictions of love, family, adulthood, and all the other dark forces that can pressure us to get married. Mary Berman's debut novel is gleefully macabre and unflinching. This is an author who's willing to go there and drag you with herand you will love her for it.