Crybaby

A Gripping Thriller of Survival and Vengeance

What happens when a ten-tonne Indian elephant goes rogue in the heart of rural India?

Once revered as a sacred temple elephant, Crybaby was stolen, brutalized, and left for dead. But he didn’t die.

Now, he’s become something else.

Something terrifying.

Something unstoppable.

Villages lie flattened in his wake. Roads are shattered. Crops trampled. Witnesses speak in hushed voices of an enormous shadow slipping back into the jungle—untouchable, untraceable. To the locals, he is no longer just an elephant. He is a living ghost. A force of vengeance. A god reborn.

Enter Ahanna, a veteran wildlife ranger tasked with an impossible mission: track and stop the rampage before more lives are lost. Equipped with tranquilizers, surveillance drones, and trained kumki elephants, Ahanna must navigate a treacherous terrain where corrupt officials, poachers, and old-world superstitions collide. But as she gets closer to Crybaby’s trail—and to the enigmatic hunter Rahul, who has his own reasons for wanting the elephant dead—Ahanna begins to uncover something far more ancient and dangerous than she could have imagined.

Crybaby is not just a rogue elephant.

He is something older.
Something wild.
Something that refuses to be tamed.

Written by Mark Watson, bestselling and multi-award-winning author (IPPY Gold, Moonbeam, Reader’s Favorite), Crybaby first exploded in popularity as a serialized novel on Substack, where it grew from just 100 readers to over 350,000 monthly readers worldwide. It was praised for its visceral prose, rich atmosphere, and cinematic pacing.

"Reading Crybaby is like watching Jaws for the first time."
"It’ll do for elephant rides what Jaws did for swimming in the sea."

Perfect for fans of:

• Peter Benchley (Jaws, Beast) — for man vs. nature terror

• Michael Crichton (Congo, Jurassic Park) — for science-meets-chaos adventure

• T. Kingfisher (The Twisted Ones) & Paul Tremblay (The Cabin at the End of the World) — for atmospheric, intelligent horror

• Alma Katsu (The Hunger, The Fervor) — for myth-infused survival thrillers

• Nick Cutter (The Troop) — for brutal, immersive horror in wild settings

• Scott Smith (The Ruins) — for jungle horror that spirals into madness

• Cassandra Khaw (The Salt Grows Heavy) — for lush, lyrical darkness

• Karen Russell, Jeff VanderMeer, and Brian Evenson — for the eerie, the uncanny, and the ecological sublime

If you love slow-burn supernatural thrillers, animal horror, or mythic jungle adventures with razor-sharp edge and emotional depth, Crybaby is the novel you’ve been waiting for.

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