The Villa, Once Beloved

Some legacies are best left buried

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

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. 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 . . .

Rights inquiries: Eddie Schneider, JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., eddie@awfulagent.com

Marketing and publicity inquiries: Martin Cahill, Erewhon Books, martin@erewhonbooks.com

High-resolution photos and writer bios: access Victor’s press kit here.

Press for THE VILLA, ONCE BELOVED

• Reactor: 30 More SFF Titles to Look Forward to in 2025

• Reactor featured the book announcement here, along with some words from the author and the editor.

Praise for THE VILLA, ONCE BELOVED

For all its beauty, no saints, no heroes, no angels inhabit this villa — only ghosts and secrets. Manibo has crafted a pitch-perfect modern gothic, in which the personal is political and there is no such thing as the past: only facets of a dangerous and suffocating present.

—Premee Mohamed, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora Award-winning author

A classic Gothic thriller set in the Philippines in the wake of the Marcos dictatorship, Victor Manibo’s terrifying new novel The Villa Once Beloved holds you tightly in its clutches and refuses to let go. A curious, headstrong young woman visits her boyfriend’s eerie ancestral home and confronts a horrific family legacy entwined with a nation’s dark history and her own mysterious past. This chilling tale seamlessly blends supernatural shocks and suspense with powerful political and social drama, and builds to a hair-raising climax. Sleepless nights await!

—David Demchuk, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Bone Mother

The Villa, Once Beloved is a gothic, haunting tale of estrangement, dissecting the complexities of identity and diaspora, intergenerational trauma, and the helplessness of vicious cycles in a slow burn narrative bound together by chains of secrets buried and unearthed.

—Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Palace Near the Wind

Manibo has penned a gothic family saga about the price of privilege—biting and raw, with an ensemble cast at odds with each other and themselves. And beneath this very real, immaculately-rendered drama, a simmering dread: dark secrets threatening to emerge, along with something much worse. The Villa, Once Beloved is a magnificent terror.

—Cadwell Turnbull, award-winning author of The Lesson and the Convergence Saga

Lush, richly imagined, and utterly entrancing as it builds a deeply unsettling dread, The Villa, Once Beloved is set within a historical context that gives the horror the heft it deserves. Step through the doors of this Filipino villa and you won’t even dream of escaping.

—Emily Carpenter, author of Gothictown and Burying the Honeysuckle Girls

Manibo is the kind of writer who knows what's forever: the gothic, the triumph of queers, the family fable. He puts all that up against what cannot stand: colonialism, small-mindedness, the lies that keep us from ourselves. The Villa Once Beloved is a now and forever banger.

—Meg Elison, author of The Pill

The Villa, Once Beloved is a tale of eerie legacy, one branded with the mark of colonization and the haunting of family. It weighs the present against the past that paid for it. Victor Manibo steeps us deep in Filipino heritage, hierarchy, and history, crafting a tale that will keep your lights on at night.

—Markus Redmond, actor, screenwriter, and author of Blood Slaves

Victor Manibo's The Villa, Once Beloved delivers thrills, chills, and the terrors of grappling with complicated birthrights and colonial legacy. Manibo tackles the revelations and horrors of complicated homecomings and tangled family ties in classic gothic fashion: nightmares, monsters, and bloody revelations.

—Lara Elena Donnelly, Lambda Award-nominated author of the Amberlough Dossier trilogy

A harrowing tale delving into dark Filipino history, Manibo’s vintage style renews the gothic trope of haunted houses with the Sepulveda villa. A character all its own, the villa is secretive yet revealing, cursed yet still loved, frightening yet wounded. An unsettling read of horrific colonial atrocities and the aftermath of generational trauma.

—Shannon Morgan, author of Her Little Flowers and Grimdark

When college student Sophie travels to the Philippines with her boyfriend, Adrian, she’s hoping to get to know his family—and explore her own unfamiliar roots. She’s not expecting the macabre legends and folklore about his ancestral home to have any truth to them. But when everyone gathers for the funeral of Adrian’s grandfather and then are trapped in the villa by a landslide, Sophie comes to learn more about the family’s sins—and its curse—than she ever bargained for. Those who enjoy an immersive, atmospheric setting, legendary monsters, and family secrets won’t be able to put this one down.

—Kelsey James, author of The Colony of Lost Souls