Undergrowth will forever change how you look at mushrooms.

Winner of a 2019 IPPY Award for best regional fiction. Ellen King Rice delivers an unconventional thriller – a story of suspense, mushrooms, alternative economies and dark forest dwellers.

Retired botanist Dr. Oh rejoices when he finds an enormous specimen of a rare shelf fungus, a species nicknamed the “Fuzzy Sandozi.” Dr. Oh’s joy fades as his granddaughter, Jasmine, insists on reporting the dead man lying on the forest floor next to the magnificent polypore. Dr. Oh knows revealing the location of the rare fungus may lead to its destruction.

Just a few miles away, twenty-year-old Elspeth Dwerryhouse has mushrooming problems of her own when her job selling emergency prep supplies brings her to the attention of a backwoods family, the Fickhams. The Fickham men are cunning and dangerous. None more so than seventy-year-old Russell, who is a master of rape, intimidation and body disposal. Russell is keen to have Elspeth “tenderized” in his shed of glowing fungi.

How can young women make smart choices when the rules of the world and the gig economy aren’t working in their favor?
Fungi in this story include polypores, liberty caps, waxy caps, truffles and more.